


Rumour Has It: The Festival of Molten Sun

by FictionIsSocialInquiry



Series: Rumour Has It verse [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ember Island, F/M, Firelady Katara, Firelord Zuko, Sequel, is very very very overworked, rumour has it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:00:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24867220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionIsSocialInquiry/pseuds/FictionIsSocialInquiry
Summary: ‘We need this,’ Katara says quietly, intimately, as though they do not have the crushing weight of the whole Fire Nation on their collective shoulders. ‘It’s only a week.’He runs an anxious hand through his hair. ‘A whole week? Katara…’‘What’s one week out of the hundreds we’ve served over the last six years?’He glances at his wife, at the loss of her sunny smiles. ‘One week.’Twelve years after the end of the war, Zuko is running on empty. Its hard to run a nation and heal the wounds of the past with a cold serpent where your inner fire used to be. When Katara, Iroh, and Izumi conspire to get the Firelord to take a break, nothing quite goes to plan...Sequel to Rumour Has It.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Rumour Has It verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799311
Comments: 177
Kudos: 511





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> This story is for you.  
> For everyone who read Rumour Has It and commented their thoughts, gave kudos, bookmarked, favourited, shared on blog, or just added it to their browser bookmarks bar. Did you know, I get at least 3 emails a day telling me that you wonderful people are still finding this fic and loving it? Guys. That’s 3 times a day I’m given a reason to smile and feel valued and frankly I love you all!  
> If you haven’t read Rumour Has It, I would recommend checking that story out first. It’s the prelude to the shenanigans going on here and probably my favourite of the fics I’ve written. Get to it!  
> Enjoy, humans!  
> P.S. We’re earning our rating this time round. There’s less violence but more… shenanigans. M++ because: Sexy is a plot device in this story. 
> 
> A Note on Characterisation.  
> One of the recurring comments/reviews on Rumour Has It was beautiful praise for the story’s characterisation. I spent a lot of time workshopping the characters as they were before we diverged from canon and (I hope) they earned their character development. BUT… This story picks up six years after the RHI epilogue and twelve years after the comet. There’s A LOT of off-screen shenanigans that went down so we’re going to be seeing new sides to our characters. They’re still fundamentally themselves but they’ve grown up and life has hurled every kind of thing at them… That changes a person. Zuko and Katara are also not in a very good place at the beginning of this story. Yeah. Stick with me, lovely reader, I’ll make it up to you by the end. Promise!
> 
> TW.  
> Zuko’s mental health is a mess here and I’ve made it as real as I could so when I was reading over the story, I decided to flag this up front just in case: Zuko’s in a state of almost constant debilitating stress, depression, and self-loathing. For at least the first third of the story. He has the AtLA world equivalent to panic attacks, lashes out a lot, and will probably (if author has done her job well) make you feel The Feels. This is a heads up for those of us who might find that difficult. 
> 
> — FictionIsSocialInquiry

# i. Before

## Rumour Has It I

Being an apothecary in the nation’s capital is nothing like mixing herbs in the village she grew up in, Janzu decides whilst emptying the chamber pot into the street. It’s dawn and sure, she misses the countryside— less so the stench of fish that clung to every surface of her house— but there is something about the city coming alive with the frenzy of an upturned anthill that makes her feel awake. Energised.

Janzu knows she made the right choice marrying Heshi, no matter what her family said— still says. She takes a moment to wash her hands and wonder what she’ll wear today. The veil is so old fashioned now, even the Firelady forwent it last year. Rumour has it, the conservatives in the government threatened to strike when the Firelady and Crown Princess wore matching outfits in the style of the still at large vigilante claiming the title of a certain river spirit.

‘Burn that,’ Janzu snots, rinsing the chamber pot. These days, the festival celebrations of the capital’s patron spirit aren’t about the past or tradition.

The Painted Lady celebrations are about forgiveness and moving forward.

## Rumour Has It II

The festival is wild, but it always is.

The Crown Princess makes the opening address and ignites the effigy of the Painted Lady at exactly midday when the sun is highest in the sky— the crowd roars and the pale girl who will one day rule their nation beams brighter than the twelve-foot burning statue.

The Firelady claps more enthusiastically than any of the other nobles in attendance but that is just more of the same. The people of the Fire Nation have stopped whispering about their Lady’s full-hearted enthusiasm where other nobles are reserved. Well, they’ve stopped being concerned about it anyhow. They find her Water Tribe enthusiasm refreshing after a long line of tyrants with cold, hidden motives.

It becomes common hearsay: Their waterbending Firelady burns for what she believes in, it lights her up.

## Rumour Has It III

Sanji’s brother is too stupid for words.

No really.

He’s thirteen and he’s standing outside Mi Lin’s place after curfew— not that curfew’s even a thing on the Feast Day of the Painted Lady— throwing deep fried fireflakes at her window.

‘She’s _seventeen_ , dumb dumb,’ Sanji hisses from the shadows she’s hiding in. She will _not_ be caught tied up in this embarrassing display. ‘What the flameo is she going to want with you?’

Sanji knows such things. Sanji’s just turned fifteen.

Her brother turns to her with a retort on his lips, a retort that sputters and dies. He’s staring over her shoulder, at the roof of the noodle bar.

Sanji’s heart leaps into her throat as she spins and sees two figures running— flying, they’re so agile it’s doubtful their feet touch the ground— across the rooftop. Overhead the fireworks begin and by the bursts of light Sanji catches a glimpse of blue on the near figure, a hint of red in the skin of the other.

‘The Painted Lady,’ she breathes while her brother leaps from foot to foot, Mi Lin forgotten as he cries, ‘and the Blue Spirit!’

## By the Grave of the Firelady I

‘I thought I’d find you here.’

The words are hushed, respectful; the kind of voice reserved for the resting place of the dead. In the Fire Nation, the dead rest in their ashes while plaques of pale stone record their names through the ages.

It’s well past nightfall now. The Firelord is reclining against the bodhi tree a stone’s throw from Firelady Mai’s headstone. Beside him is the golden head piece he’d swapped the blue and white mask for upon returning to the palace— the crown that weighs so much heavier than gold-plated brass should. Below them, down in the city, the celebrations are not winding down. A warm wind stirs his hair, pulls a strand from its top knot to dangle before his eyes.

The Firelord can’t ignore her forever.

He glances up at his living wife.

## By the Grave of the Firelady II

Katara is paused by Mai’s headstone. She bows— low, lower than decorum dictates— and crouches to place Izumi’s latest offering by the marble. ‘Izumi wanted to bring this herself this morning before she left but the duties of the Crown Princess are not always aligned with the duties of the heart.’

Zuko doesn’t hear what she whispers next, but his heart grows heavy anyway. He could guess. ‘She wouldn’t blame you,’ he tells her again.

They both know he doesn’t mean Izumi.

Katara straightens, her eyes glassy and full. ‘I know. You’ve said so before.’

‘And yet…’

She doesn’t answer, touching her fingers gently to the grass before the headstone, and this _silence_ that’s been growing between them like black mould settles in.

## By the Grave of the Firelady III

‘I wished she’d die once.’ The words are whispered and full of regret. ‘When I found out she was pregnant. All because I couldn’t let go of my bitterness about...’ She turns to her husband then, full brimming with the weight of ghosts. ‘I may not have killed her, but I certainly have things to atone for.’

Zuko reaches for her, guides her over to sit beside him. She’s still dressed as the vigilante she so rarely gets to be these days, crimson paint curling around her shoulders. ‘You did nothing wrong,’ he mutters into her hair as he kisses her temple. ‘Did I ever tell you what I did when I found out about that Northern boy of yours?’

‘Tako?’

‘The Northern boy,’ Zuko insists.

‘Tako,’ she says again, fingering her painted bottom lip. ‘Your uncle said you threw a tantrum.’

Indigation— even after all these years, a wedding, two children, and countless memories of laughter, tears, and intimacy later— warms his cheeks. ‘Uncle was… concise. I threatened to sign a bill raising taxes on Northern Water Tribe trade goods and tried to gauge if any of my ministers could be trusted to discreetly employ a political assassin.’

‘Oh, for the love of Tui and La…’

## By the Grave of the Firelady IV

‘Sokka said he’d caught you two kissing. What was I supposed to do?’

She struggles from his embrace to glare. ‘Nothing, you crazy person! We were broken up! _You_ were married!’

‘Exactly.’ He pulls her close enough to kiss, spends long seconds lingering at her lips. ‘I didn’t do anything… despite the some _very_ carefully laid plans.’

She rolls her eyes.

‘You _saved_ Mai, and Izumi, when those loyalists… when they tried to take my daughter from me. You saved them both, brought them home.’

She huffs, tucks hair behind her ear. ‘You can’t talk me out of this guilt, Zuko. It’s mine.’

‘What’s yours is mine,’ he reminds her, distracts her. ‘And neither of us is to blame for Mai’s death.’

She says nothing to this, only looks away; perturbed by the past.

## By the Grave of the Firelady V

‘Did Xu Li tell you where to find me?’

‘I don’t need councilwomen to know where to look for my husband.’

Zuko steels himself even as he searches out distractions. ‘Sokka told me the worst cemetery jokes last time he was here. Do you want to—?’

He can feel her trying to catch his eye, it’s as difficult to ignore as the cacophony of their city’s revelries below. ‘So you don’t want to talk?’ she asks lightly.

 _No._ ‘What about?’

‘Zuko.’ Her tone is dangerous, he glances at the ground and away. ‘I can’t believe after everything we’ve been through you won’t talk to me. The comet, the Wong Long Chi, that Earth Kingdom summit, the assassination attempt after Ito was born… we survived it all but this _thing_ … you won’t talk about?’

Anger boils in his blood. ‘You say _this thing_ like it’s nothing!’ he snaps before realising her ploy. He shoots her a withering look. ‘No, Katara.’

## By the Grave of the Firelady VI

‘Why come here?’ she pushes, and her hand grips his sleeve. ‘Hm? Why here of all places?’

‘You’re not the only one Izumi talks to,’ he says in a low voice. ‘She told me about wanting to visit her mother in a letter when she was touring Shu Jing with the Commissioner. It’s the least I could do until she returns from her trip with Uncle.’

‘Alligator-bull shit,’ his wife says flatly.

‘You think she doesn’t talk to me too?’

Katara waves her hand impatiently. ‘No, I know how close you two are, but it’s not the whole reason you’ve been coming here recently. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. You come here after we fight. I want to know why.’

And there have been fights.

Numerous ones.

But each and every argument becomes harder and harder to avoid, then fight, then weather. Until Zuko does little more than allow her to speak while he holds the fracturing pieces of himself together long enough to get away, out of the room, the palace. Long enough to seek out comfort in this hilltop of the dead.

## The Unsayable Things I

He thinks: _Because you’re one of the few things that keep me going and when we fight it feels like I’m not going to survive the year. I’m tired, Katara, I’m so tired and it never stops. There’s always more to do, more they need from me_ _—_ _you, the kids, the nation. Twelve years I’ve been Firelord and I’ve never taken a break. Twelve long, beautiful, painful years that I wouldn’t have been able to endure if not for you. You challenge me. It makes me a better man when you do. You challenge me to be the best version of myself but sometimes I’m not up to the task. You think so much of me, but I don’t have it in me to be the person you think I am right now. I haven’t even been able to firebend these last few weeks. I’m burnt out. Can you believe it? The shame! A Firelord who cannot even summon his element_.

He doesn’t say that though. For all his time in politics, the words of his heart still trip him up. They come across all wrong.

Instead, he says: ‘Because _she_ never fought with me like you do.’

## By the Grave of the Firelady VII

Shock first, then hurt. That’s how he sees his lie land in his wife.

The regret is instant. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

Her eyes are swimming again but this time in a familiar anger. ‘One chance,’ she hisses, leaning away from his embrace. ‘You get one chance to explain what the hell that means or I’m going to freeze you to that tree.’

He sighs— _so tired_ — and kneels before her, taking her hand in his. ‘Do you want to go somewhere? Ember Island? Kyoshi Island? The South? Anywhere, you can choose. There’re a few days between the end of the budget session next week and the 100 Year War Summit where we might be able to squeeze in a vacation. Just you and me and the kids.’

He watches it happen, watches her read him— she’s so good at it, hearing the words he doesn’t know how to say. He watches her eyes dart across the lines worn prematurely into the skin between his brows, watches her anger shift into something softer. _Please say yes_.

‘Anything, my love,’ she tells him in that way she has, that soothing water-way, as she places her palm against his cheek. ‘Let me talk with Hitashi and Wei. There’s at least three days I can reschedule. Izumi and Uncle will be home again in a few days, why don’t we talk to her then? She might like some say in our first family vacation.’

## The Unsayable Things II

Zuko doesn’t have the energy to cry, but he almost wants to. In relief. In gratitude. In love for this woman holding him together even when he doesn’t deserve it.

 _Thank you_ , he means to say, but the ache inside of him wins out. ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ he whispers instead and with the words, shame bleeds, tangy and sharp, into the vulnerable places inside of him.

Her eyes widen before creasing. ‘You’re tired, my love. It’s been a long year.’

‘It’s only summer.’

‘Exactly.’

He searches her steadiness for doubt and finds none. ‘I can’t do this,’ he breathes, panic gripping him. ‘Katara, I can’t keep doing this.’

## The Unsayable Things III

She holds him up when his body wants to slump to the ground. ‘You’re going to take a break,’ she says calmly, taking his face between her hands. ‘Both of us are. No work. No meetings. No sessions. No kids. Uncle Iroh would be more than happy to look after them for the week. We’ll go somewhere, anywhere. Just the two of us.’

 _A strong man never breaks. A strong man does not dishonour himself or his family by succumbing to weakness. A Firelord must be a strong man_. His father’s words, Zuko finds, are as poisonous all these years later as they were in his childhood. ‘A whole week? What about—’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ his wife says with utter confidence. ‘Who do you think you married? I took down the Wong Lon Chi and your sister, you think I can’t handle our unruly schedule?’

Doubt sucks at him, wants to pull him from his wife’s grip. ‘Katara, we can’t—’

‘We _can_ and we are,’ she says in that tone, the one that brooks no argument. Their ministers know that tone, their children certainly know it. He’s suddenly grateful for it.

The tears come then. He hides them against her stomach as he leans into her lap. Relief is a heady thing. He feels like she’s just pulled him back from the brink of some chasm that would have swallowed him whole. ‘Okay.’

Katara doesn’t reply. What she does instead is bend her body over his until he’s cushioned alongside the patterns their children left on the soft skin of her belly.

## The Serpent I

If Katara has any trouble rescheduling their responsibilities over the next few days, she doesn’t show it. In fact, she barely shows any signs of their late night argument by Mai’s graveside, or how long her husband wept in her arms. Zuko had steeled himself for her gentle but firm probing later that night when she crawled into her side of the bed, washed clean of red paint, but the waterbender only smiles, presses a kiss to his lips, and cuddles into his side.

Within moments she is snoring.

Sleep does not come so quickly to him. He finds the dark corners of their room full of figures that disappear when he turns his head to look for them. There is a cold serpent coiling in his chest where his breath of fire used to burn and the snake winds tighter and tighter as the long dark hours drag on.

When dawn arrives, it is almost a relief to abandon the bed and the stale sleepwear damp with fear and sweat. Almost. Before long, the exhausting list of duties expected of him that day returns, and he takes a moment to steady himself against the door before donning his clothes with exhausted, unfeeling fingers.

## Their Highnesses, Princess Kana and Prince Ito I

Katara yawns when she joins Zuko at their private breakfast table.

‘Here,’ she says with a sleepy smile and hands him a piece of parchment.

‘What’s this?’

‘Today’s schedule,’ she replies, opening her arms as Ito, Kana, and their maids bustle into the room.

‘Mama!’ Ito is squalling as he hurtles himself into her arms. ‘Kaka hitted me!’

‘I did not!’ Kana shouts loud enough to make all the adults wince. ‘ _He_ pulled my hair!’

Katara and Zuko both turn to the red-faced nursemaids. ‘M—My apologies, your majesties,’ Ito’s maid, Sen, gasps, dropping into a low bow. ‘Their highnesses the prince and princess are out of sorts—

‘Boisterous!’ Kana’s maid interjects nervously.

‘— this morning.’

Kana climbs onto her father’s lap, wailing, ‘He started it!’

Katara sends their daughter a stern look. ‘A wise and kind person does not concern themselves with who started what. A wise and kind person seeks always to be compassionate.’

Ito, tears clinging to his eyelashes, tucks his head under his mother’s chin. ‘It’s _so_ hard to be a wise and kind person, mama,’ he whispers to her. ‘Much easier to smack.’

## Their Highnesses, Princess Kana and Prince Ito II

‘Did you smack your sister, Ito?’ she asks the boy softly.

He winces. ‘Only a little.’

‘Why, my love? Why did you smack her?’

‘Cause she was being a bad girl for Miu!’

The maid’s face pales. ‘His highness has a strong sense of justice. Truly, your majesties, my deepest apologies—’

Zuko waves his hand, the snake in his chest sinking its teeth into his flesh. ‘It’s fine.’ He gestures to their places beside the children’s. ‘Kana? Can you sit by Sen now please?’

The young girl pulls her thumb from her mouth glumly. ‘But, Papa, I want to sit with you.’

‘And I would love that, but you know we cannot eat breakfast until you and your brother take your seats.’ He eyes his youngest daughter sternly. ‘Cook tells me there might be mango.’

Ito and Kana exchange a look before rushing to their seats, settling down on their knees.

## Of Shipyards and Fiscal Sessions I

‘As I was saying,’ Katara continues, taking the offered cup of jasmine tea in hand. ‘There were some changes. You’re needed down at the docks today. Admiral Jee has been assured that you’ll spend the day looking over the recommissioned naval vessels. You know the ones from my public transportation project?’ Zuko stares at her in disbelief. ‘I expect it will take you all day, possibly tomorrow too. Jee is very excited for the honour of the Firelord’s personal touch in all his hard work over the last couple of years.’

He’s shaking his head, his own tea ignored. ‘The budget session—’

‘I’m more than capable of working with the treasury on the budget, Zuko,’ she says in a tone that brooks no argument. ‘But you know how unwell I’ve been this last week. I can’t stand on a boat all day, so you’re just going to have to do this. For me.’

‘You told me you were feeling better.’

‘My throat hurts,’ she says, staring him dead in the eyes as she coughs pitifully into her napkin.

He gives her _the look_. Her lip twitches.

## Of Shipyards and Fiscal Sessions II

He almost glares at her. Almost. ‘The lords of the treasury will be offended if I spend two days on a public initiative during the peak of the fiscal—’

‘The lords of the treasury are welcome to feel offended and to bring their complaints to me this morning.’ She eyes him in a way that gives Zuko a sinking sense of foreboding; how much work was going to stack up on his desk while Katara played her game?

‘Papa, watch this!’ Ito is grinning widely as he boils the tea in his cup. ‘Grampy Iroh taught me!’

The tension around which the snake is coiling lessens for half a heartbeat. ‘Your grandfather is a skilled firebender, Ito, but he knows better than to ruin a perfectly good cup of tea by overheating it.’

The boy giggles but the surface of his tea clears of boiling bubbles.

Katara is smirking at him over the crescent-shaped slice of melon between her fingers. ‘I may not see you for lunch, _your majesty_ , but if you’re still concerned about the lords of the treasury, I shall report in full at dinner.’

The ambivalence returns in force as he watches his wife stand, kiss their youngest two children, and sweep from the room. _What game are you playing at, Katara?_

## Of Shipyards and Fiscal Sessions III

For _three_ days Admiral— once Lieutenant— Jee drags Zuko up and down the decks of ships once built for war. Colossal cruisers, once-deadly destroyers, stealthy frigates now repurposed by the navy into emergency accommodation, housing for the poor, travelling entertainment barges, and inter-island transport vessels.

His father would be furious were he here to see it.

Katara’s ceaseless work on the program is clear; it’s a huge project that has involved not only the navy but the metalworking guilds, craftsmen, sailors, developers, businessmen, and— for some reason Zuko is yet to understand— a particularly successful cabbage merchant.

It’s a huge success and very impressive but—

‘Three days!’ He’s drinking sake with Jee and it’s almost like old times again, almost like those lonely angry years of banishment upon his ancient steam-powered ship with the crew who hated him. This time, his old lieutenant is in cahoots with his wife; on the verge of treason. ‘You’re telling me three days to show me a dozen vessels is normal and not some hairbrained scheme my wife has put you up to?’

## Of Shipyards and Fiscal Sessions IV

Jee refills his cup with the Shu Jing sake, a gleam in his eye. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Firelord Zuko, her majesty asked me to be thorough.’

He glares at the older man. ‘You took me into every washroom on every one of these ships,’ he snaps but the admiral just maintains that secretive smile that Zuko wants to burn from his face. ‘One might conclude that you’ve gone above and beyond your Firelady’s command there, Admiral.’

‘I live to serve at your lady’s command,’ the impudent man has the gall to say.

Zuko shakes his head at the man, knocking back the drink. ‘You’ve spent too much time with my uncle.’

Jee just smiles.

## Of Floral Arrangements and Trade

The next morning, his assignment at the docks long over-completed, Katara hands him another parchment over their morning tea. ‘I’ve spoken with the gardeners—’

‘No.’ He looks at her, aghast, over the top of the schedule. ‘Katara, no.’

Her smile does little to melt his resistance. ‘But, my love, I’m still deep in congress with the trade and treasury ministers and won’t have time for this today. You’d be doing me a huge favour.’

‘“Accompany Princess Kana and Prince Ito to the royal gardens with Groundskeeper Jeien,”’ he reads aloud, ignoring the children’s giggles. ‘“Decide on the floral display for the upcoming war anniversary summit.”’

Katara crooks a brow. ‘You might want to take your time with that,’ she advises.

‘So you can have more time to come up with the next ludicrous distraction? I have a nation to run, Katara!’

‘No, so you don’t preference red flowers over green, blue or yellow,’ she replies calmly, hiding a smirk behind her hand. ‘You wouldn’t want to show an international preference and isolate one of the other nations.’

‘“Interview candidates for Izumi’s new maid,”’ he reads through gritted teeth. ‘I have staff who do that sort of thing for us!’

‘Oh, they’re all busy,’ his wife explains, circling the table to kiss the children’s cheeks and his lips. Here she lingers, her fingers tickling in the hair at the back of his neck. ‘Don’t work too late, my love, Izumi will be home tonight.’

Zuko wants to grab at her. Wants to tear up the ridiculous list of chores and feed them to flames. Wants to make her understand that while he’s picking floral displays, he’s not finding ways to ease the burden of the failing economy on the most vulnerable, on those who are suffering, on—

‘C’mon, Papa!’ Ito clamours dancing to the door with his sister. ‘Flowers! Flowers!’

Miu and Sen are hiding smiles of their own but when he looks up the women are stoic as stone. ‘If you ladies would be so kind,’ he sighs, gesturing to the two excitable children by the door. ‘Casual clothes will do for today. They’ll be covered in soil by the time we’re done.’

## Reunions and Reinforcements I

When Zuko, Ito, and Kana arrive at the family dining room for dinner— each more dirt-smeared than the last— Zuko’s eldest daughter is in earnest conversation with her stepmother. The girl is willowy, pale, her black hair sleek and immaculate where Ito and Kanas flyaway curls rarely conformed to neatness.

At their boisterous entrance, Katara and Izumi look up. A grin, contained but joyful, crosses his eldest daughter’s face. ‘Papa.’

He melts as Izumi first bows formally then embraces him. The irritation that has been percolating low in his gut all day eases and he hugs the growing girl tightly. She looks more and more her mother’s daughter even now at eleven than she did when Mai was around to comment fondly on it. She’s Mai through and through with his golden eyes and Katara’s distinct devilishness in the way she looks at the world.

‘You’re home,’ is all the greeting he can find.

As she draws back, he reluctantly releases her. ‘Grandpa and I arrived late this afternoon. Mama was just telling me—’

‘How glad I am to have her home,’ Katara interrupts, coming to stand at Izumi’s side and winking at her. The girl grins wide and slow. ‘How glad you would be to see her.’

Zuko glances between them, suspicion and trepidation circling each other like wolf-lions. Before he has a chance to respond, Kana slinks to her sister’s side and wraps her arms around the older girl’s hips. ‘Zumi!’

Ito hollers all the way from the doorway, across the room, and laughs as he tackles his older sister’s side. ‘Zoom Zoom Zumi!’

Izumi laughs and bends to envelope the two younger children in a hug. ‘Agni, you two make more noise than Grandpa when he snores and _you’re_ only a fraction of his size!’

## Reunions and Reinforcements II

‘Where is your grandfather?’ Zuko asks, while Katara smiles a watery grin.

‘Just running an errand for me, he’ll be along soon. Shall we sit?’ His wife claps her hands together before her and gives a strangled laugh. ‘I know it’s only been a few days, but it feels like forever since I’ve seen you three together. You’ve all got so big.’

‘Muuuuuuuum,’ Ito begs as Katara bends to envelope all three of them in a hug. ‘Ew, you’re waterbending on me!’

‘They’re tears, dumb dumb,’ Kana calls, wriggling from her mother’s grip. ‘Mama’s _always_ mushy.’

Katara sniffles as she stands. ‘I can’t help it if you’re all so lovable, can I? Don’t badger your mother, go sit down.’

Zuko, despite his uncle-related suspicions, offers her his arm. ‘My lady,’ he mutters.

She accepts it, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. ‘It must be the new herbal tea Sen gave me, I’ve cried half a dozen times since I started drinking it.’

‘Should you try a different blend perhaps,’ Zuko says in a low voice as their three children take their places at the table and Izumi launches into a tale about pirates. ‘I can barely keep up with you at the best of times.’

She gives a watery chuckle, easing down into her seat. ‘Then you’re going to love your uncle’s news.’

## Reunions and Reinforcements III

‘No!’ The Firelord shakes the paper at his wide-eyed wife and newly arrived uncle across the breakfast table. ‘Katara, I swear to Agni—’

‘Grandpa says we shouldn’t swear to Agni unless we mean to stake our life on the oath,’ Izumi recites, sipping her ginseng with a grace he can never quite replicate. ‘He says that fire gods are the least forgiving and we should show them our respect.’

Zuko resists glowering at his daughter. ‘Your grandfather is technically correct, but I wonder what he expects when _certain people_ interfere in—’

‘Peace, Firelord Zuko.’ Iroh is pouring himself a steaming cup of green tea. ‘Ember Island’s humble Festival of Molten Sun has not had the honour of a personal visit from a sitting Firelord in over a hundred years. It is the responsibility of a good Firelord to pay attention to the poorest among us as well as the lordliest.’

Zuko doesn’t miss the spark in his wife’s eye. He turns to her. ‘And the budget sessions? We need a final document to begin the new financial year with.’

‘Done.’ She’s as satisfied as a lion-cat lazing in the sun. ‘I’ve signed the document into law and the treasury has already begun its interest calculations.’

## Reunions and Reinforcements IV

‘You signed it without me!?’

‘Of course, I’ve been working on it all week.’

He drops his face into his palms. ‘Katara! There were key tenants I needed included in that bill!’

‘Oh?’ she says sharply. ‘You mean the allowance for the five percent expected downturn after last year’s poor harvest? Or the contributions from our family’s trust? Or the interest adjustment to the Southern Earth Kingdom reparations that are compounding at a higher rate this year than last?’

The snake in his chest is hissing and spitting; Zuko cannot quite meet her eyes. ‘Yes. Those.’

‘Then rest assured, it’s been taken care of.’

## Reunions and Reinforcements V

He studies her then, studies the circles under her eyes and the slump of her shoulders. ‘What about the new agriculture grants for the drought-stricken farmers in the south?’

‘Accounted for. There was actually a mistake in your calculations. We needed fifty thousand less than you thought.’ She raises a brow, daring him.

Zuko leans his elbows on the table. ‘The monsoon relief fund?’ he asks, mimicking her expression.

‘Done.’

‘The public schooling initiative was due to be reviewed—’

‘And I reviewed it. We’re saving ten thousand by dedicating two of my recommissioned vessels as floating quarters for rural students who come to the capital to go to school during the week, and home on the weekend.’

He wishes his uncle wasn’t there, he wishes the children were chattering elsewhere. Zuko is suddenly gripped by an impulse to spill the waterbender over the table and—

‘You can catch up on the details when we get home,’ Katara tells him, winking, as she hands him a piece of parchment.

He takes the paper, nervously. ‘Get home?’

## Reunions and Reinforcements VI

Izumi beams at him. ‘Don’t worry, Papa, Grandpa and I can handle things.’

Zuko blinks. ‘Handle things?’

Iroh covers Katara’s hand with his, smiling between them. ‘You have both worked so hard these past years and you have much to be proud of. Providing me with more nieces and nephews as well as your duty to our nation.’ Iroh’s eyes are gentle as always, the sunniest pools on the warmest spring day. ‘Now is the time to serve us by resting.’

‘We spoke about it, remember?’ Katara says gently, not meeting his eye.

The dark and humid hillside by the grave of the woman he couldn’t save comes rushing back. Colour stains his cheeks. ‘Katara, no, I—’

‘I’m afraid it is already decided, nephew,’ Iroh says quite cheerfully. ‘Tomorrow, I become Regent and advisor to Crown Princess Izumi. We have plans for this place, don’t we, niece?’

Izumi practically glows with excitement. ‘Grandpa says I can order a National Tea Appreciation Day for—’

Iroh clears his throat sharply, eyes gleaming. ‘ _Ahem_ , yes, as I said, the best way to serve your people is to rest and recover your strength.’

## Reunions and Reinforcements VII

A foot touches his under the table. ‘We need this, my love,’ Katara says quietly, as though it’s just the two of them. As though they do not have the crushing weight of the whole Fire Nation on their collective shoulders. ‘You need this, I certainly need this. It’s only a week.’

He runs an anxious hand through his hair. ‘A whole week? Katara…’

‘What’s one week out of the hundreds we’ve served over the last six years?’

He sighs. ‘I feel fine. Your little game worked. I’ve barely worked at all this week and I feel better than ever.

It’s only half a lie but her disappointed expression shames him twice as hard. ‘Zuko.’

He glances at his children, all three of them watching him strangely, his uncle, patient as ever, his wife, her sunny smiles gone now and replaced with something that makes the snake in his chest hiss and spit. ‘One week?’

Katara nods earnestly. ‘Just seven days.’

Zuko sighs. He tells himself he’s doing this for her. The sad truth is there’s no way he’d ever take the time for himself. ‘Fine. Where’s this Festival of Molten Sun?’

## The Serpent II

They don’t talk about it as they go to bed that night. The serpent in Zuko’s chest is roiling and twisting so hard he wants to take his dao swords, his mask, and spend the energy in a fight against a man twice his size. Anything to escape it’s twisting, grinding, gnawing.

Katara is unusually silent, not just with words. Never in six years of marriage has she started the night on the far side of the bed. Even in the middle of the humid Fire Nation summers he would feel her feet pressed into his, or a finger would curl around his own.

He never knew he could feel so lonely with another person an arm’s length away.

He almost reaches out to her at one point. Breaches the distance between them to drag her closer, turn her around, kiss her to show how sorry he is for always doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing. Kiss her so she knows that despite his hesitation, he wants nothing more than to spend time alone with her without the distraction of their weighty responsibilities.

But he doesn’t.

This is Katara asking to be left alone. He doesn’t know how he knows it, but he does. To reach past the space she has put between them would be wrong, no matter how he longs for her warmth.

So he says nothing. And he does nothing. Sweat covers his skin in a cold, grimy layer and the shadows at the corners of the room swirl all the more menacing.

By the time the sun rises, Zuko is so exhausted that he doesn’t even argue when the snake in his chest spits a hateful diatribe about the woman dozing peacefully beside him.


	2. ii. Day One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thank you to everyone who read, kudo'sed and commented one chapter 1! I'm excited to be sharing this story at last. I've been working on it on and off for a while now. This update is a shout out to everyone affected by the awfulness that was the 2019/2020 Black Summer fire season in Australia. I personally lost my home and there are many, many others who went through the same.

# ii. Day One

## The Destruction of Fire I

Ember Island was on fire mere weeks ago.

The expected wet season never came, was as dry as the dry season, and all that heat without any of the rain meant a careless ember sent half the island up in flames. The Festival of Molten Sun is the island’s best hope of raising the funds needed to keep their way of life afloat. At the moment, as it currently stands, Ember Island is broke.

Zuko can barely believe his eyes. Their ship is forced to dock at a temporary wharf made of floating bamboo rafts bound together with rope. The old wharf is nothing more than blackened stumps.

‘Spirits,’ Katara mutters as they disembark to a line of bowing attendants. ‘Look… the people.’

He is. The servants fetching their luggage, the sailors working the temporary docks, the administrators talking with their captain— all of them have the same severe expression.

‘The fires,’ he whispers to her, nodding politely to the captain as they pass him. ‘It’s a tourist island, they suffer when the tourism dries up.’

She nods, her face tight when she catches sight of the blackened dockside shops and taverns. ‘Tui and La…’

## The Destruction of Fire II

Zuko hides it better but his disquiet is just as great as Katara’s. There are scaffolds erected around the stone remains of the older buildings and newly erected posts on the sites of the newer bamboo ones, but well over half of the buildings are gone.

‘Your majesties.’ A woman missing a tooth bows low before them, polite deference fixed over her face like a mask. ‘Allow us to welcome your majesties back to Ember Island and apologise profusely for forcing you to dock at the public wharf. Unfortunately, the royal family’s private wharf was damaged in the fire and your majesty’s servants have not had the chance to repair it yet.’

Zuko steps forward gesturing behind him. ‘On our ship you’ll find blankets, pillows, supplies and food. See it is distributed to those that need it.’

The woman blinks, ducking her head. ‘As the Firelord commands, though his majesty should not concern himself with… the…’

Zuko is staring in horror at the ruined town, clearly not listening to the attendant. ‘Captain Chang,’ Katara calls, turning to the thin captain as he bows. She takes Zuko’s hand and turns him so he’s facing away from the carnage. ‘You’ll see it done?’

‘As you wish, your majesty.’ The captain bows again. The attendant beside him is confused, uncertainty in her eyes; clearly Katara and Zuko are not her idea of a Firelady and Lord. ‘If— If your majesty’s would step this way, the royal household staff have palanquins waiting—’

‘No.’ Zuko pulls his hand from Katara’s and frowns at the attendant. ‘We’ll walk.’

## The Destruction of Fire III

The woman tries to hide her shock. ‘Are you— are your majesty’s sure? Their majesty’s staff are only too happy to serve—’

‘I said we’ll walk,’ he growls before shouldering past the attendant in the direction of the ash lined road that leads to the royal villa.

Katara smiles tightly at the gaping woman. ‘Thank you…’

‘Rashi, your majesty.’

‘Thank you, Rashi, for your help. We won’t require the palanquins today. Would you extend our thanks to the bearers for their efforts?’

Rashi bows again. ‘Of course, your majesty.’

Zuko is nearly at the laneway when Katara catches up with him. ‘What in the name of the ocean spirit was that about?’ she demands, yanking on the sleeve of his robe. He shrugs her off and continues down the path. ‘Zuko!’

He sighs but it comes out nearer a snarl. ‘If you want the palanquin, go ask them. They won’t say no.’

Her grip on his arm is bruising. ‘You know I don’t give two fire flakes about the palanquin!’ she snaps, forcing herself into his space. ‘But I do care about why you just stormed off by yourself!’

Zuko glances behind them and catches an old couple staring, bug-eyed, at them. Or at the crowns in their hair. Swearing under his breath, he takes Katara’s elbow and begins down the black lane where vegetation once cast cool dappled shade.

‘Not here,’ he says stiffly, letting her pull her arm free.

He feels Katara glowering at him and they spend the rest of the walk to the beach house in stony silence.

## The Royal Household I

The villa is staffed by the locals of Ember Island, a staff of thirteen who trade shifts when the royal family or their guests are in residence. When Zuko and Katara climb the zig-zagging path to the front door, the cook, two maids, the housekeeper, groundskeeper, and an attendant are all waiting in two neat lines by the front door.

The silent Firelord stalks between them, beats the attendant to the front door, yanks it open and retreats from the glaring sun into the shade of the house. He doesn’t stop until he rounds the corner and can lean back against the cool bamboo plaster wall, hidden from sight.

Here, he closes his eyes. He can hear Katara speaking in a measured voice to the household staff.

‘Thank you for welcoming us. Though I’ve not stayed here in years, your hospitality makes me feel right at home.’ She pauses and he can imagine the lines of neatly dressed servants bent in the appropriate kow tow, foreheads pressed to the burning sand. ‘Please, my husband and I are here to relax. This is the first holiday he’s taken since assuming the throne. You would do me a great honour if you would consent to lessen the formality during our stay.’

Confusion and anger chase each other around the snake in Zuko’s guts.

‘My name is Katara and when I go inside, I’m taking this crown off for the next week. If you don’t feel comfortable calling me by name, I respect that, but I ask you to leave bowing for outside the walls of this house. In here, I’m just Katara.’

## The Royal Household II

The housekeeper clears his throat. ‘As you wish, Lady Katara.’

Behind his closed eyes, Zuko knows the beautiful smile she’s bestowing upon the islanders. ‘Thank you…’

‘Mushi, my lady.’

Something like bitterness and longing cuts through the snake’s thrashing. ‘Mushi,’ his wife muses. ‘I once knew a Mushi, in the Earth Kingdom. He’s a great man. I’m pleased to know you Mushi. Will you introduce me to your colleagues?’

‘It would be my pleasure, my lady.’

Zuko has always envied Katara her way with people. They warm to her almost immediately just as the household staff do now. The maids, Shi and Kiwaki, are two local girls who lost their home and now reside in the servants quarters. The cook is Ran, a man who has served the royal family since boyhood. The groundskeeper just goes by Ginko. The attendant is Rashi, from the docks; Zuko can hear how uncomfortable she is in the breech of decorum.

Katara has that effect on the people of the Fire Nation.

She greets them all and asks them to make themselves at home for the duration of her stay. ‘The Firelord and I thank you for your service,’ she says as she steps inside the cool building.

‘Your trunks will arrive by…’ the housekeeper is saying but Zuko has already started stealthily down the corridor towards his old rooms.

## Ghosts of the Past I

The door is shut.

A thick layer of dust meets him upon arrival. Of course. _He_ is the Firelord now. They would have made up his parent’s old room, not this empty room of the Crown Prince. The thought freezes Zuko in the doorway, lost in this world of sparkling cobwebs and thick layers of dust. He can see every scratch, ding, and stain worn into the floorboards; he remembers them all, remembers learning every inch of this room during the weeks and months of sun and salt in his childhood. Back when his family had been happy, before Lu Ten died and his father’s ambitions outgrew his compassion.

Footsteps in the corridor startle him and he closes the door with a _snap_.

Katara watches him warily.

‘They made up the wrong room,’ he says to fill the silence. The memories in this place are crawling under his skin and making the serpent coil, oozing venom.

She glances beyond him at the open master bedroom. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure!’ he snaps, stepping forward to push past her. ‘I’ll tell the maids—’

‘Zuko.’

The exhaustion in her voice stops him in his tracks. It almost frightens him, hearing his waterbender sound so defeated.

## Ghosts of the Past II

‘Are you okay?’ He steps half a step closer. ‘Do you feel sick?’

She looks up at him with fatigue in every line on her face. ‘Will you sit with me? Just for a moment.’

Bewildered. He’s bewildered. ‘Of course.’

She takes his hand and tugs him towards his parent’s room. ‘Katara, I can’t—’

‘You can.’

‘No, really. I don’t want to stay here.’

‘I know. But I need to sit down, and I need to talk to you and I’m sitting—’ she points ahead of them ‘—on that bed. You’ve already agreed to talk to me, so I don’t think that leaves you much choice.’

## A Waterbender’s Touch I

He swallows thickly as they enter the light and breezy bedroom but it’s not the menace he’d felt it to be from the hallway; it’s not the dark, imposing place from his memories. The lavish crimson furniture is gone, only a plain white canopy bed, timber wardrobe, and bedside tables take up floor space. A full-length mirror encrusted with seashells leans against the wall beside the door, a chaise lounge draped in Water Tribe blue beside it. A palm lily sits on Katara’s side of the bed, while Zuko’s side table supports only an unlit beeswax candle.

He holds his breath at the changes, at the light pouring in from the open balcony doors. ‘What…’

‘Your uncle helped me,’ Katara explains leading him forward. ‘He and I decided the old furniture should go, so we donated it to a charity that’s aiding victims of the fire. The rest was easy. Rashi has been organising the new things. They’re all from local craftspeople, the blue fabric for the chaise lounge they made specially for me…’

He turns to look at her, really look at her, in the afternoon sunlight that streams in through the open doors. She’s studying the room critically, her left hand clutched to her chest while her right worries her lower lip. She’s dressed in Water Tribe blues, but the cut and silks are Fire Nation. The two piece is cut so that her stomach is bare but Zuko’s wife has tied a sheer sash around her waist, the insignia of his nation embroidered in navy over her stomach.

## The Unsayable Things IV

She catches him watching her and twists a strand of hair around her fingers. ‘Don’t you like it?’

He thinks: _Don’t I like it? You’ve taken a place that reminds me of my father’s cruelty and turned it into something completely new. Something we can make our own memories in, raise our own children in free of the evils of the past. Do I like it? I don’t think I’ve ever felt this calm in this room._

He says: ‘It’s nice.’

She smiles hesitantly and drops onto the bed, stroking the pale duvet. ‘White,’ she mutters, a smile plucking at her lips. ‘Do you like the white? I thought it might be a nice change from all the red.’

He doesn’t know what to say. ‘You don’t like red?’

She rolls her eyes at him. ‘I married you, didn’t I?’

He tries a smile despite the snake’s writhing tail looping round his ribs. ‘You did.’ He turns to the open doorway, staring out across what remains of the jungle, the sands, the water before he finds the courage to ask. ‘Are you still glad that you did?’

## The Unsayable Things V

The rustling behind him stills but he doesn’t want to— can’t— turn around to gauge her response. Suddenly, he regrets asking. If she wants to leave him, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

‘Of course, I am,’ she says in a strange tone and Zuko realises she’s taken aback. ‘I’ve never doubted it. Why would you even ask that?’

Scaled skin wrests at his tongue from the back of his throat. ‘I… I don’t know,’ he answers honestly.

He hears her approach and her fingers flow up his side like raindrops in reverse. It makes him think of all the ways she touches people: lovingly, firmly, with her heart on her sleeve for all the world to see. ‘I love you,’ she murmurs against his shoulder, but it’s as though the snake has iced his heart closed.

In an instant, he can’t bear her touch.

‘I’ll, um, I’ll go see what time dinner will be ready,’ he mutters, sliding out from under her hands to flee— he tries to tell himself it’s not fleeing— back out of the room, down the corridor, and away from the waterbender and her dangerous touch.

## Unbalanced I

Dinner, he’s told, will be ready by six.

‘Would his majesty like me to order cheeses and seafood while waiting for dinner?’ the housekeeper, Mushi, asks from his awkward semi-bow. The staff are still trying to figure out how to obey Katara’s request for less formality with their Fire Nation upbringing that demands utmost curtesy.

If Sokka were here, he’d tell war stories until Mushi smiled and the maids giggled.

If Aang were here, he’d show them airbending tricks until the whole household stopped to watch in amazement.

If Toph were here, she’d tell them to ignore their Firelady and she’d take the foot rub.

‘My lord?’

Zuko blinks at the housekeeper and shakes his head, grimacing. He doesn’t think he could keep food down at this point. ‘No food, thank you.’

The maids Shi and Kiwaki bustle into the room with luggage under each arm. Upon catching sight of Zuko, Kiwaki drops into a bow and announces, ‘Your majesty’s luggage has arrived.’

Zuko considers correcting their formality as Katara had instructed earlier but cannot find it in himself to breach the barrier of their distant politeness. ‘Very good. Please take our things to our room and draw my lady a bath when you’re done.’

‘Yes, your majesty.’

## The Serpent III

Without anything else to do, and not wanting to shame Katara with his weakness, he makes for the courtyard where he’d once taught the Avatar firebending. The thought makes him, and the snake, unreasonably furious. Really, he’s nostalgic for a simpler time— Agni, what does it say about his life now that he’s longing after wartime with his friends— but anger is easier.

It always has been.

Shedding his travelling robe, his shoes, the damn crown, Zuko circles the courtyard, swinging his arms and loosening and stretching his neck muscles. Power in firebending may come from the breath but it had been weeks since he’d been able to produce a flame. His body is as out of practice as his breath.

He starts slow, simple. Breathing energy into his stomach.

The snake doesn’t like that. There is no room for fire when a cold serpent has made itself lord of his lungs. He tries anyway. Tries to summon a flame over his hand but all he manages is an itchy palm.

‘Agni, curse it!’ he snarls and resorts to calling a fistful of flame from the lanterns hanging from the eaves. It doesn’t feel right, using someone else’s fire. His own feels more familiar, more himself. This is like running in the shoes of another. It works but it feels all wrong.

## Unbalanced II

His movements are frustratingly clumsy, made so by his dampened senses. The snake has done more than distort his ability to create fire, it has made him a stranger to his own element. He’s estranged from fire.

‘Some master firebender,’ he finds himself snarling after burning his arm twice in as many minutes. ‘If I had to fight Azula now, she’d kill me in three moves.’

He’s barely moved at all but cold sweat coats him from head to toe and something other than the serpent makes his stomach roil. The stranger’s fire drops from his grip and splutters out in the dirt. He can’t even extinguish a flame himself.

_Pathetic_.

A throat clears somewhere behind him. ‘Your majesty?’

He grits his teeth and prays the housekeeper wasn’t watching for long. ‘What is it?’

‘Lady Katara asks if your majesty will be cleaning up for the evening meal? Lady Katara has asked me to remind your majesty that it will be served in half an hour.’

_Pathetic_.

‘Thank you. I’ll be in shortly.’

‘Your majesty.’

Zuko hangs his head backwards and stares up at the pink and purple streaks of clouds stretching across the sky. A Firelord that can’t firebend. A husband that can’t talk to his wife. What is _wrong_ with him?

## The Vacation: A Stumbling Start I

It has been a long time since Zuko cared about what his servants think of his behaviour, but even he is uncomfortably aware that Firelords don’t sit at the dining table as its being set, brooding.

Less rare are husbands who avoid the wife they’ve upset.

The snake is laughing at him; he never wanted to be the man who hurt those he loves…

The maid, Kiwaki, manages a fine dance between courtesy and functionality as she arranges the table setting around his crimson elbows. She places two dozen candles in an arrangement as old as Zuko’s ancestors— one popularised by a monk some six hundred years ago. It is said that the candle’s placement is a domestic recreation of the fire exhaled by a volcano.

_Create a tabletop demonstration of fire’s inability to be contained_.

Zuko remembers the philosophy well. He remembers thinking the monk might have been onto something. Now he’s resisting snapping at the maid for burdening the table with so many flames, three dozen reminders of his weakness.

## The Vacation: A Stumbling Start II

‘Would his majesty ease himself backwards for a moment so I might set his place?’ Kiwaki bows as she stutters through the request, her irritation well hidden beneath the decorum his people wear like a cloak.

Without a word, Zuko complies, staring past the girl at the mountain-shaped candle display. Before him, Kiwaki sets a wide-bottomed bowl and at its 11 o’clock, a smaller, steeper bowl the colour of bone. Jade chopsticks beside a soup spoon. A rose bamboo napkin and three cups arrayed like starbursts around the bowls— a cup for water, a cup for tea, a cup for wine.

Zuko waves the maid away when she is merely fretting over her placement and reaches for the pale porcelain sake jar. He never has developed a head for the stuff but it’s stronger than tea and right now that’s all that matters.

‘Thank you, Kiwaki,’ he forces himself to concede to the girl by the sideboard. Ordinarily, he guesses she’d set the table in a few moments and be off to the kitchens to spend time with her friends on his staff, but with him here, weighing the room down with his brooding… she’s waiting to be dismissed.

## The Vacation: A Stumbling Start III

‘Shall I summon Lady Katara, your majesty?’

_The Firelord waits for no man, woman, or child_ , his father’s voice snarls into his thoughts. Zuko sloshes wine into his cup until it is brimming, but not from a great thirst; his hands are shaking.

‘I’ll wait. You can go.’ Then, because his and Katara’s difficulty shouldn’t belong to this polite girl: ‘You must be hungry. Help yourself to dinner in the kitchen.’

Kiwaki’s eyes widen for a split second before she thanks him and bows out of the room.

Zuko crumbles like parchment under flame. Leaning heavily on the table, he rubs his face and presses the heel of his palms into his eyes. Beyond the skin of his hands, the volcano centrepiece flickers in the humid night air. He sets the sake down without even a sip— drink has never been something he’s liked turning to in desperation— but his hands are still shaking as though he’d downed a bottle in a single sitting.

_Weak_ , Ozai’s voice supplies from the depths of memory. And then something that sounds like, _lucky to be born_.

## The Dinner I

Footsteps in the hall force him upright, wiping away the cold sweat on his brow as he turns to the door. Behind his back, he grips his own clammy hands tight enough to hurt.

Katara is in a pale bamboo cotton dress, thin for the lingering summer heat. The skirts swing in a whispery dance around her legs; Zuko blinks when she halts by the dining room door and the shivering material swishes around her feet, pulling definition into her hips.

He thinks: _You’re so beautiful and not just for your body. There have been times where just looking at you brought me peace like nothing else can. There have been times when I feel as though I’m losing my mind and holding your hand reminds me to breath. Have you seen how Izumi watches you? How she tries to stand like you, tall and confident the way you do without even thinking about it? Have you seen how you sweep into a room and change the whole mood? How do you do it? How are you this strong?_

He says: ‘Nice— er, that’s a beautiful dress.’ He silently curses himself with his father’s words and tries again. ‘You look beautiful. I mean, you _are_ beautiful.’

Katara takes pity on him and smiles. ‘Even after two children?’

_Always_. ‘Even after seven.’

‘Seven?’ His wife steps into the room, cool as a late autumn sea breeze. Zuko walks around the table to meet her, pours wine into her cup. ‘Seven is quite a leap from two.’

‘Three is a hurdle let alone seven,’ he agrees, trying not to stare at her. He hands her the wine and finds he can’t look at her, can’t stop this internal shrinking that makes him feel smaller than their four-year-old son.

## The Dinner II

She stands close enough that the ghost of her body heat makes his pulse stutter. ‘I don’t know,’ she mutters in a tone that _definitely_ knows _something_ , ‘trying for seven could be… fun.’

Zuko nearly chokes on his wine.

Behind them, the two maids arrive laden with steaming dishes and chilled dishes and slices of raw fish marinated in lemon and salt. Zuko berates himself for his own cowardice when he is glad of the distraction from his wife’s leading words.

Trying for any number of children right now is beyond him.

The table is smaller than he remembers. He is sat at one end, Katara’s place is set at the other and the maids are filling the empty place between with enough food to fill them twice over.

Zuko seats himself, silently; he cannot think past the serpent strangling his fire.

## The Dinner III

Shi makes a startled noise. ‘My lady, I can move that for you!’

Katara, in that determined way only she possesses, has grabbed the linen cloth beneath her plate setting and is dragging it around the edge of the table towards the chair at Zuko’s side.

‘That’s okay, Shi, I’ve got it.’ The maid hovers, uncertainly. ‘Really, girls, I can manage. Thank you.’

A clear dismissal. Both Shi and Kiwaki can do nothing but bow and depart.

Zuko watches her excavate her water cup and chopsticks, shake the napkin until it spills from its origami fold. She meets his gaze as she sinks backwards into the chair beside him, something flickering in her eyes.

Something he knows better than to challenge.

‘Comfortable?’ Zuko asks.

‘Very,’ Katara replies.

## The Dinner IV

Crickets invade the candlelit space with their chirp and Zuko passes Katara the fish for something to do.

‘I was reading over your final draft of the budget last night and there were a few—’

‘No.’

He glances at her, confused. ‘No?’

She plucks a slice of pink fish from the bowl and sucks it between her lips. ‘Ground rules,’ she announces, spreading her napkin across her lap.

‘Er… ground rules?’

‘Yes. No politics.’

‘At all?’

‘No _work_ , not any. Not unless the Four Nations are moments away from another war and we’re the only ones who can stop it.’ She licks the lemon juice from her fingers, a curl of hair slipping forward past her shoulder. ‘And maybe not even then.’

## The Dinner V

Zuko doesn’t say _Katara, be reasonable_ for the same reason Sokka doesn’t tell Toph she shouldn’t fix Earth Rumble matches: experience. ‘We have to at least attend the Festival of Molten Sun. You remember? Uncle’s flimsy excuse to get me out of the palace?’ He shot her an accusatory look. ‘We can’t just ignore the islanders for the whole week.’ _Be reasonable_.

She is watching him with a decidedly disconcerting expression that becomes a slowly creeping smile. ‘Zuko and Katara are on holiday, Firelord. _Zuko_ and _Katara_ will be going to the Festival of Molten Sun, yes. But if, say, they bump into the lord mayor of Ember Island there will be _no_ naval discussion, fiscal negotiation, or agricultural… anything.’

‘You ran out of words for conversation, didn’t you?’

‘Do I make myself clear?’

A half-smile dawns at the edge of Zuko’s mouth. ‘Inescapably and verbosely, my lady.’

‘Good.’ Katara raises her chopsticks and plucks a sautéed oyster from its bed of mizuna. ‘Pass the salt.’

He does so, the snake in his chest bearing down tighter on his rib cage as the smile at the corner of his mouth grows. The snake stales his good humour, it’s been doing so more and more recently. It takes the chance to remind him of his failure earlier in the courtyard. It reminds him of the dusty and forgotten depths of his childhood bedroom.

All of a sudden, the blooming smile feels as unseasonable as winter rains.

## The Dinner VI

‘I asked the staff to be discreet,’ Katara interrupts the downward spiralling of his thoughts. ‘When we arrived. I asked them to ease up on the “your majesty-ing.” I actually tried to convince your uncle that we don’t _need_ a household staff of thirteen people for a one week holiday, but you know what he’s like.’

Zuko does. Zuko knows _well_ what his uncle is like. ‘Did you remind him that we not only survived, but ended a war without a household staff?’

‘And that I was raised without one and am more than capable of doing without them for a few days.’

‘And that most people go their whole lives without them.’

‘Exactly!’ Joy, just a flicker, lights her expression brighter than all the candles in the room, brighter than if Zuko dragged the sun back up into the sky and held it up in competition with her; so bright that he feels the room dim as she frowns. ‘He only managed to convince me when he reminded me how badly the fire has damaged the economy here. I couldn’t say no to creating a dozen new jobs, no matter how short term.’

Zuko accepts the bowl of rice she passes him, covering her cool fingers with his clammy ones as he takes it. ‘Uncle learned politics from the cradle, he knows exactly how to use local economic downturn to convince you to do something you don’t want to do. He did the same thing to me when Kuei and that damn ambassador from Gaoling wanted to—’

Katara gasps. ‘No!’ she exclaims, waving her spoon at him. ‘What did we _just_ agree? No politics!’

‘You started it!’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Yes, you did! You started talking about Uncle and the Ember Island economy!’

Katara scoffs through a mouthful of crab. ‘ _My_ anecdote was about your uncle. _You_ brought Kuei into it.’

‘Did not.’

‘Did too.’

‘Did _not_.’

Katara’s lip twitches. ‘Do you think we spend too much time with our four-year-old?’

His serpent’s scales have a Northern Sea chill to them. ‘I don’t get to spend enough time with our children. Any of them.’

Katara pauses, her chopsticks halfway to her mouth, casting Zuko a concerned look. ‘That’s not true, you spend lots of time with them. As much as you can.’

‘Forget it,’ he almost-snaps. No one snaps at Katara, but he comes damn close. Suddenly furious, he shoves a spoonful of coconut curry into his mouth. The next moment he can’t bear the distant sound of the ocean, the gentle flicker of candlelight, the peace of the dinner table.

His chair screeches when he stands. ‘Excuse me.’

The disappointment on his wife’s face is a blow the serpent hisses at. ‘Zuko—’

‘I’m going for a walk.’

In a dozen strides he’s out of the room, then down the hall, and out the front door. He tries not to slam it, but his veins are so full of trapped fire they’re practically choking.

The door slams.

The wind blows.

Zuko clenches his fists, his teeth. He steps off the deck and flees the house for the beach.

## Complications I

He tries to conjure fire alone on the beach.

He holds his shaking limbs still long enough to stoke his breath of fire with deep, intentional inhalations, visualising heat in the glacier around his heart. _Power in firebending comes from the breath_ , his Uncle reminds him down the long years. He had been sixteen and boiling with fury at the injustice of the world. Now he was nearing thirty and a husk of a man.

No man at all.

But Zuko has never been one to give up.

He breaths, not as deeply as he once could, but he breaths. Once, three times, ten. With a strangled sound he thrusts his right fist forward in a basic Cinder Jab, his feet sliding wide. _A strong root_ , the voice that sounds like his uncle approves.

A heat haze wearily flickers where once he’d been capable of wildfire.

His shoulders cramp; nausea turns his stomach.

‘Again,’ he snaps, drawing himself upright.

The Agni’s Hearth form has always been a favourite of his; he presses into it, forcefully. Arms rigid, moving in tandem, hips square, solid…

No heat haze, no flame. Only bile, acidic in his throat.

Zuko bends over and chokes up the little he’d eaten at dinner into the Ember Island sands.

Through watering eyes, he spies the swirls of deep red blood that pollute the mess.

## Complications II

He rinses his mouth in the ocean, splashes his face, crouches by the water’s edge with his face in his hands but he can still taste his weakness. And his blood.

The water feels cold despite the season. Early autumn, after a full summer’s heat, the shallow seas around these islands are usually cool but balmy. On this night, they make his hands cold.

Zuko wipes them against his pants, his mouth a grim line. _Damn_ Katara, and her insistence on being on this _stupid_ island when they have work to do— important work. It’s only going to be stacking up on their desks. He swipes aggressively at the sand on his robe; the weeks of catching up… He’ll have even less time with Izumi, Kana, and Ito. He’d already missed the first time his son bent the element they shared.

His hands shaking, the Firelord stands too quickly and black dots cloud his vision. His stomach gurgles and seethes.

_We’re going home in the morning_ , he decides as he kicks sand over the mess that was his dinner and storms back to the beach house. _First thing in the morning._

## Their Majesty’s Wrath

‘It’s _one week_ , Zuko! One week! For the love of the ocean and moon, can’t you take a break from that spirits _damned_ crown for one week!’

Zuko tries to remember if his wife has always sworn this much or if the lack of their children’s impressionable ears around to catch her has loosened her tongue. Either way, he’s not backing down.

‘I didn’t want this to begin with! This was your idea!’

He forgot just how like his element her eyes could burn. ‘No, it wasn’t! _You_ suggested—’ She cuts herself off with a sharpness that could draw blood. ‘Who cares whose idea it was? You need this! _We_ need this, can’t you see that?’

‘All I can see is the mountain of work that’s waiting for me while we— what? Sit here and argue about how _relaxing_ this stupid holiday is?’

Katara throws her hands into the air, a choked sound crawling out of her throat. ‘ _You’re_ the one making it a problem! You, Zuko! You won’t talk to me; you barely look at me! You keep walking off in a huff! Ever since leaving home—’

‘Because _you_ dragged me away! You! I didn’t want this, Katara!’

She glares at him and its colder than the southern seas. There’s something here, some distance he can’t breach, won’t breach. She is standing on the prow of a ship sailing right on by, passing him here on this wreck ruled by the serpent that is gleefully scripting these sharp words he can’t seem to stop himself saying.

Guilt smothers him. Why can’t he just suck it up and pretend for her? Once there was a time when he’d have done anything, gone on any number of holidays for this woman.

‘We’re not leaving,’ the Firelady tells him and that’s that. They are at opposite ends of the dining room table, the uneaten food cooling between them. She’s still scowling as she brushes past him— that damn dress dragging at his ankle like the tide— and sweeps from the room.

He hears the door to his parent’s old room slam.

_Idiot_ , he thinks.

_You were lucky to be born_ , his father’s ghost agrees.

## The Crown Prince’s Room I

He drags the dust sheets from his old bed, reveals the maroon coverlet trimmed with gold. The trimmings flicker under the lantern light he’s set beside the bed. The bed feels smaller than his memories led him to believe.

At his elbow, the household attendant appears, taking the dust sheets from him and dropping two pillows at the head of the bed. ‘There is a bath drawing for his majesty in the en suite should he wish to wash while his attendants turn down his bed.’

Zuko nods, only half listening. ‘Thank you.’

The woman moves efficiently around where he stands, frozen. Numb. With practiced ease, she shakes the old coverlet free and disappears into the linen press to fetch another. The crimson sheets are just as he remembers them back when…

## A Memory

_‘Cicada-hoppers,’ she said, her bare back pressed against his bare chest._

_He’d dropped his forehead onto her shoulder, still groggy with the slow syrupy pleasure that is native to his waterbender’s body. ‘What?’_

_She pointed at the forest beyond the open window; dense palm lilies and ferns, fireflies hovering in the summer humidity. ‘Back in Ba Sing Se, you said, “It’s loud in summer when the cicada-hopper’s sing.”’ She twisted, lifted his chin to press her lips against his own. ‘Warm. Water everywhere. You said you thought I’d like it here.’_

_He was silent then. Ah, this is a sad memory. A sorrowful one. From a time before the world let a woman of water into the nation of flames. There were tears on her cheeks, tears on his too. ‘Do you?’ he managed at last. ‘Do you like it here?’_

_She was soft, so soft, while they made a very adult mess in the sheets of his childhood. ‘I love it,’ she told him, and he’d known she meant_ You, I love you _. ‘It’s… I_ _—_ _I love it.’_

## The Crown Prince’s Room II

‘Your majesty?’

Zuko glances up at the returned attendant. She’s clutching fresh summer linens, pale yellow trimmed with muted reds, her eyes cast to his feet like the servants back home. Formal palace manner, the height of Fire Nation serving protocol.

He clenches his hands but nods for her to proceed. ‘Would his majesty favour offering his servant comment on the quality of his evening meal?’ she asks and her throat bobs as she swallows

Zuko frowns, distracted by the past. ‘It was excellent. The Firelady would agree.’

The attendant— Rashi— peeks up at him and away. ‘His majesty’s servants are here to cater to the needs of the royal family. It would dishonour his majesty’s household if any of the dishes offended his majesty’s superior palette.’

‘I…’ He shakes his head, squaring his shoulders. ‘The meal was fine, Rashi. You’ve all done an admirable job and should be proud.’

There is a shake in the attendant’s hands. ‘In that case, your majesty, perhaps the household staff might send for Doctor Wen. The doctor would be honoured to serve his majesty in any complaints his majesty might be suffering…’

Zuko’s brows meet in a frown. She saw him. She’d seen him on the beach. A faint fear grips him low in his guts; had she merely seen him vomit? Or the abysmal failure at firebending that had preceded it too?

A thin sheen of sweat makes him shiver.

‘I’m fine. I don’t need a doctor,’ he says stiffly, walking towards her in the doorway. The woman flinches when he raises his hand, the smallest wimple of decorum, and Zuko hesitates before taking the linen from her. Gently. ‘Go, you may retire for the night.’

The attendant bows low but doesn’t move. ‘His majesty’s servants—’

‘ _Go_ , Rashi.’

She doesn’t stay to argue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The angst increases. Stick with me, people. It will get your feels but I promise catharsis by the end ;)


	3. iii. Day Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smaller chapter this time to hopefully make the angst short and painless-ish :)

## Hakoda’s Gift

Zuko doesn’t see Katara until breakfast the next day.

The Firelady joins him at the table— the twilight candle centre piece replaced by a vibrant display boasting what’s left of the islands flowers and ferns— her hair free of her crown. And her expression empty of her smile.

‘Good morning,’ she mutters but he’s left in the cold of their unresolved argument. Her moon bright smiles are absent, her eyes underscored by the shadows of a sleepless night. He wonders if she regrets it now— tying herself to him and his nation and every exhausting moment it all takes from her.

It costs him nothing to apologise. Nothing. Only the serpent’s derision, venomous and shameful. ‘The sailboat your father gave us for our wedding is moored at the pier.’ He should know, he ordered it brought in at dawn when he couldn’t bear his own tossing and turning any longer. ‘I thought we could find a skipper, someone to take us out for the day…?’

Katara doesn’t quite smile, but she takes the china pot of Shu Jing’s finest black tea when he offers it to her. ‘We won’t need a skipper.’

‘We won’t?’

A waterbender’s trust in the ocean. ‘I’ll be captain for the day, your majesty.’

## Aboard the _Fiery Sea_ I

Zuko spent three years living at sea. In that time, he made very little effort to learn about his vessel beyond how quickly it could chase a sky bison. But when he follows his wife aboard the _Fiery Sea_ and she shows him a reef knot, a bowline, a rolling hitch, he concludes he knows more about Ito and Kana’s imaginary friends than he does about sailing.

They aren’t alone, of course. Rashi, increasingly unnerved by the Firelady’s proposed route over the unpredictable coral reefs, insists on including the groundskeeper Ginko— ‘To advise her majesty on the temperamental shoals and currents her majesty might find herself in adversity with!’— and Toshi, the kitchen boy— ‘The royal household knows their majesty’s would not shame their servants by denying them the honour of aiding their nautical venture,’— to wait on them and serve as local knowledge of the coral shelves that dot the Ember Island’s shores.

Katara wants him to relax? Fine. But his idea of relaxation isn’t being interrupted every five minutes for—

‘Would you like a fresh cup of hibiscus tea, sir?’ Toshi asks, his forehead bent in a bow so low that Zuko loses sight of the boy’s face. Katara, meanwhile, is in as close an argument as they could come with the unerringly polite Ginko about which route to take around the upcoming reef.

Zuko gestures at his wife’s empty cushion beside him. ‘Take a seat, Toshi.’

‘Mistress Rashi said—’

‘Mistress Rashi isn’t here. Take a seat.’

The boy can hardly refuse the order.

## Aboard the _Fiery Sea_ II

‘Do you go to school here on the island?’ the Firelord asks the serving boy.

‘Yes, your majesty— your Firelordliness.’

Zuko thinks of Sokka and his brother-in-law’s sons who have inherited their father’s quirks. ‘Sir will do, Toshi.’

The boy glances around, the tea pot still in hand. ‘Are—Are you sure, your majesty?’

‘Very sure.’

‘Okay… sir.’

‘For the _last_ time, Ginko! I’m a _waterbender_ , you don’t need to worry about riptide currents pushing us onto the reef!’

‘If her majesty would only attend to the _leeside_ current and its proximity to the rock wall—’

‘ _Water_ bender, Ginko!’

‘School?’ Zuko prompts the boy, taking the pot of hibiscus tea and pouring a second cup. ‘I suppose the fire disrupted your studies?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The boy watches with wide eyes as Katara points at the map between she and Ginko emphatically. ‘Err, should I assist her majesty?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Zuko replies mildly, handing Toshi the tea. ‘Tell me what you’ve been studying.’

## Aboard the _Fiery Sea_ III

‘Did you know there are over five hundred kinds of fish the fishermen catch around the island? Over five hundred! There’s this black and yellow one Sensei Maiku said was poisonous if you eat it raw but when we salt it and fry it in hot oil it tastes like koala sheep from the mainland!’

Zuko nods along, something between longing for his own boy and amusement sticking in his chest as the boy recites just about every fish fact he’d heard in the last week. ‘You don’t say?’

‘And,’ Toshi continues, gesturing so that his tea slops onto the deck, ‘the Ember Island whale shark can get so big that when it gets stuck in the coral reef during low tide its belly touches the sand bar and it can’t move until high tide!’

‘Surely not?’

‘Yeah! I’m _dead_ serious!’

Zuko thinks of his own son and points over the side. ‘Have you ever swum with the whale sharks?’

‘No.’

‘I have.’

‘You have?!’

‘The Avatar and I did, off the coast of the Earth Kingdom. That’s where the whale sharks spend the summer.’

Toshi’s eyes are as round as papaya lemons.

## Aboard the _Fiery Sea_ IV

‘And then Aang sort of… wriggled down the unagi. I don’t really know how to describe it, but it looked painful. Anyway, he would have ended up feeding the unagi of Kyoshi Bay fresh Avatar if it wasn’t for the Kyoshi Warriors.’

‘The Kyoshi Warriors! Like those ones that guard the Firelord— I mean you— in the capital?’

Zuko inclines his head, passing Toshi the bowl of fruits. ‘The very same. Have you had breakfast? Are you hungry?’

The boy nods as eager as Ito when there’s food on offer, hands reaching—

‘Toshi!’ Old Ginko, having lost his argument with his Firelady— he has Zuko’s sympathies there— is approaching the boy sitting by the Firelord’s side. The old sailor’s hands are rough when he pulls the boy to his feet. ‘What are you doing, boy? That’s their majesty’s food!’

‘He’s fine,’ Zuko tells the older man but Toshi’s cheeks are red and he stammers an apology as he scurries back to the servant’s bay at the back of the boat.

Ginko’s disapproval is clear. ‘My apologies, your majesty.’

Zuko stands, straightening his robes. He wonders if his servants see the ghost of his crown in his hair even though he has left it back at the beach house. He waves his hand at Ginko and strides up the deck to where a waterbender is knotting the billowing sail.

## Aboard the _Fiery Sea_ V

They drop anchor half an hour later, in the smoother waters by Charring Coals Reef— the compromise Katara and Ginko had arrived at while Zuko spoke with Toshi and missed his own children.

The winds are kind that day; they don’t gale, but they don’t disappear either and Zuko finds himself smiling at Katara’s delight. At the way she runs her hands over the ropes, thrills at being on the sea aboard a vessel from her homeland.

‘I haven’t seen you like this in years,’ he says, just for her ears.

She pauses to cast him a questioning look.

He shrugs and sheds his outer robe. ‘You suit the ocean.’

_You always have_.

## The Coral Reef I

‘Zuko, you have to come in and see this!’ Katara breaches the surface long enough to exclaim. ‘There are fish every colour of the rainbow! I didn’t know fish could be so colourful!’

He knows the sort of fish she grew up with, the kind her tribe scrapped a living from— grey, humped creatures valued for the fat in their sides.

He’s slouching against the lip at the back of the ship, arms crossed over his bare chest. His feet dangling in the water are the only part of him that he wants wet. ‘It sounds good.’

She rises on lazy rolling waves, disappointed. ‘You don’t want to come in?’

‘No. I’m fine here.’

Katara glances out at the ocean and for a terrible moment Zuko thinks he’ll get what he asked for; he thinks she’ll disappear back under the water and he’ll be alone with the serpent’s snarling—

‘I could make you.’

There’s a glint in her eyes that’s not entirely nice.

‘You could,’ he agrees because it’s true. He cannot bend and they’re in her element.

His wife swims idly nearer. ‘You don’t want me to,’ she says thoughtfully as though mulling over her options. ‘Or maybe you do, you just don’t want to ask.’

Zuko stares at her, half frightened, half entranced. He leans forward. ‘I’d be at your mercy, my lady.’

A wicked smile lights her face. ‘You already are.’

## The Coral Reef II

The wave that reaches up and deposits him in the shallows is gentle, almost a caress. Katara is there, tugging at his arm and bending a hollow sphere of water around his head and hers so they can breathe.

And then he’s under the sea.

His first thought is awe— a familiar awe at that. His father had once taken him diving and the reef was beautiful, mystical, even back then.

His second thought is: his children. Kana would swim until she fell asleep in the waves if she were here.

Ahead, Katara is slowly drifting downwards, her hands disturbing a school of electric blue razzle fish hunting a community of buzzard-crabs. She turns to him, to make sure he can see it too— the vibrant, pulsing _life_ untouched by the fire and ash above the waves.

Zuko is surprised to find himself smiling.

He’s even more surprised when she returns it.

## A Fickle Peace I

They last the whole day without arguing.

Zuko keeps the serpent from ruining the fickle peace they found there under the waves; he’s quiet when he doesn’t have anything to say that won’t devolve into an argument which doesn’t _feel_ good. But it’s his problem, not hers.

He just wants to stop hurting her.

The serpent, however, does not.

They’re quiet over dinner. But the silence is that of sunlit exhaustion rather than simmering tension.

Or so Zuko thinks.

Katara hasn’t been able to dislodge the stone in her stomach since she found him by Mai’s grave on the Painted Lady’s Festival Day.

No.

Longer.

Katara’s been carrying this for months, ever since Zuko stopped bending with her.

## A Fickle Peace II

Katara’s quiet when she stops outside her husband’s old room on her way to the master bedroom. She’s silent as she watches him get into his old bed, the one that the maids had entirely cleaned, aired, and made up while they were out on the boat. She doesn’t speak, only watches him. He can’t read that look in her eye.

Zuko clears his throat. ‘I thought you might want space.’

She just shakes her head and disappears from the doorway. A moment later, he hears the master bedroom door close almost silently.

It’s dark, so Zuko can’t be sure if it is only shadows or heartbreak he saw on her face.


	4. iv. Day Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know fic authors say this all the time. I know reading it in the notes makes our eyes glaze over, but for me its particularly pertinent right now: The thoughtful, generous, and engaged comments you guys are leaving on this story is the only thing getting me to write at the moment. Real life is a whole world of chaos, strife, and discord right now and writing helps me cope but my motivation has been waaaaay down. Every one of these comments has given me a gentle little push to put fingers to keys and I thank you for it <3

# iv. Day Three

## Zuko Alone I

Katara is gone when he wakes the next morning.

Not _gone_ gone.

Just out.

Rashi informs him: ‘Lady Katara took a walk around the island, your majesty. She asked your servants to wish you a good day. Her majesty asked your servants to tell your majesty that she would be back before dark.’

Zuko waits until the attendant is out of earshot before he throws his teacup with all his might. It flashes fasts, out over the courtyard, shattering against the ground.

## Zuko Alone II

He reads.

For maybe half an hour. Some scroll about ancient bending forms that hasn’t been touched in decades, it infuriates the serpent. He moves onto a collection of Ember Island myths; the old bone woman, the fable of the demon cat-tiger, the volcanic spirit of the island. His eyes drift over the characters as though they’re not really there. Drawn inexorably back to the open study window.

He closes the tome with a snap.

Then he roams the house, restless and increasingly angry. When it becomes clear that he’s unnerving the household staff, he takes the straw hat hanging by the front door and walks to the beach. The public one this time.

He doesn’t know if he can stand anymore time alone with himself.

## Zuko Alone III

It’s peak tourist season, the beaches should be packed, the boardwalk stores should be doing a roaring trade. Instead the sands are black and bare of beachgoers and most of the stores are little more than ashy husks.

Zuko pulls the straw hat low, mostly so he isn’t recognised but eventually to block out the devastation wrought by fire out of control.

Ahead, on the boardwalk, there is a young girl and boy sitting behind a counter made of driftwood and leaves. _5 coppers_ , the sign dangling from the makeshift shopfront says, _for Ember Island’s best seaweed dumplings_.

The coin in his pocket suddenly feels heavy with guilt.

Zuko pulls out a handful of gold as he stops before them. ‘The best seaweed dumplings?’ he asks in a discerning tone. ‘Hm, surely they’re worth more than five coppers then.’

The little girl giggles but the boy’s eyes go wide as saucers when Zuko drops his handful of gold into the pouch between them. ‘Wow, thanks mister.’

Zuko nods once and accepts the soggy dumpling gratefully. ‘Thank you, you’re doing a very respectable job.’

He doesn’t linger. The children’s mother is eyeing him curiously from where she sits with a friend. Zuko offers the children a nod and walks on, stomaching the salty dumpling without complaint.

## Zuko Alone IV

Zuko finds that sheltered cove he and Lu Ten discovered as boys. The one shaped like a crescent moon if seen from the air. There are no trees here, there never were, only cold stone casts any sort of shade. He sits himself in the sun and studies the distant shape of another island on the horizon— Lu Ten had once told him it was a dragon that ate annoying little cousins.

The sunlight flickers and a familiar shadow passes overhead. Glancing up, his eyes widen. ‘No way…’

Appa is circling low, low enough that the firebender can hear his rumbling.

Zuko jumps to his feet, cupping his hands to his face. ‘Aang!’ he shouts and waves wide as he can. If he can just get the bison’s attention…

But no. Appa may be flying low, but there’s no way they’ll look this way, no way they’ll see.

The Avatar’s voice is unnaturally loud, carried on whirling currents of air. ‘No way! _Zuko?!_ ’

The Firelord can’t help himself. He grins as the Avatar lands and leaps from his bison with a laugh as bright and uncomplicated as sunny skies and clear days.

## The Avatar & the Firelord I

‘I don’t understand… what are you doing here?’

Aang— that goatee he and Sokka swore they were going to grow together now in full force— thumps him on the back and grins. ‘It’s just like old times! Hanging out on the beach, sneaking into the Fire Nation…’

Something like suspicion stirs in Zuko. ‘Wait. You mean you didn’t go through Immigration?’

Aang smiles sheepishly and scratches his head. ‘Zuko, your immigration people take forever! I only just heard about the fires on my way to Gaoling and wanted to see what I could do to help. You know, Avatar-wise.’

Zuko holds his hands up, incensed. ‘Aang! Those rules are there for a reason! The wildlife endemic to these islands are—’

‘I know, I know! I’m sorry! I thought it was worth the risk…’ His grey eyes drift over to the distant wharf, blackened and missing half its length. ‘I heard it was bad but, sea monkeys… It looks terrible from the air. Just a big scar on the land.’

‘It’s bad.’ Zuko rubs his eyes and Appa chooses that moment to lick him from head to toe. ‘Agh!’

‘Aww, Appa’s missed you,’ the Avatar laughs and something in Zuko unclenches.

Unwinds.

Just a little.

‘It’s good to see you, Aang.’

## The Avatar & the Firelord II

‘Shouldn’t you be in the capital?’

Zuko doesn’t remember the younger man’s gaze being quite so probing. Zuko’s friendship with Aang has come a long way since the strained months after the war ended. Killing your friend’s tyrannical father will do that to a relationship. These days the Avatar is the giddy uncle to Izumi, Kana, and Ito, the quiet but just ally in international relations, and, when time permits, Zuko’s self-proclaimed best friend.

Though Sokka is not above starting an international incident to contest the title.

‘Zuko?’

‘Hm? Oh, I’m on vacation.’

Aang looks at him as though he’s just admitted that Sokka’s last attempt at a birthday cake was edible. ‘But… you don’t do vacations.’ Aang blinks once and understanding dawns in his eyes. ‘Ohhh, Katara.’

Zuko tries to stop the smile but he can’t. ‘Yeah, Katara.’

## The Avatar & the Firelord III

Enthusiasm, never a stranger in the airbender’s demeanour, lights his expression. ‘Are she and the kids here too?’

‘Just Katara.’ Zuko studies the distant skyline. ‘We’re taking some… time off.’

‘Thank Roku!’ Aang shoots Zuko a sheepish smile but there’s no joke in his eyes. ‘You’ve been working non-stop since the war, Zuko. We had bets going on when you’d break.’

‘You…’ His friends _bet_ on when— not _if,_ he noted— he’d have a breakdown? ‘What did you bet?’

‘Urg, I lost _years_ ago. I’m pretty sure Toph’s the winner now. She thought Katara would be the one to clean up…’ Aang shot him an apologetic look. ‘Sorry.’

He should be mad, he should feel furious, but instead Zuko feels nothing. Even the serpent shrugs and tells him, _You always were the odd one out_.

_Lucky to be born_ , corrects his father’s memory.

## The Avatar & the Firelord IV

‘So, the fire,’ Aang says, scratching the back of his neck. ‘What can I do?’

‘We’re already funding a… You know what? I’m not allowed to say.’

‘What?’

The Firelord holds up his hands in a _What do you want me to say?_ way. ‘Katara has this rule. For the vacation. No politics, no policy. Nothing… work-related.’ Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘I don’t know what else to do. You guys were right; I have no life outside of being Firelord.’

Aang doesn’t disagree or shrug and look away. Zuko is almost embarrassed when his friend considers him thoughtfully. ‘Maybe Katara’s right and no work is a good idea. You’re never going to figure out what you like to do at the palace— I’ve seen your schedule. Maybe you have to be bored for a while. So that you can figure things out.’

Zuko narrows his eyes at the younger man’s wisdom, the _same_ younger man who once accidentally spiked his own drink with cactus juice instead of Sokka’s at a charity War Benefit.

‘That’s… There might be something in that,’ the Firelord-on-vacation admits.

## The Avatar & the Firelord V

Before long, Aang is pulling Zuko in for a brief hug before leaning away and squeezing the Firelord’s shoulders. ‘Say hi to Katara for me, okay?’

‘You’re not going to come see her?’

Aang is watching him closely, too closely. ‘Nah, maybe another time.’ There’s something… almost a lie in the Avatar’s words, or an omission and Zuko wonders when his friend learned tact.

‘Aang, she’ll be upset when she finds out you didn’t stop by to see her.’

The airbender whirls onto Appa and grips the reins in both hands. ‘Yeah, probably.’ He laughs and Zuko wonders now how his friend learned to stay so carefree. ‘I’ll catch her soon, the kids too. I have a present for them! Hey, Zuko, on a completely unrelated note: do you think your palace can house a litter of sky bison calves within the next week?’

Zuko is alarmed. Very alarmed. ‘Aang! _No!_ ’

‘Whoops, gotta go! See ya, Zuko!’

With that he is sky bound, and the air bears him up, up and away.

## A Waterbender’s Wanderings I

While Zuko is suffering the biggest coincidence in history— seriously, who just bumps into their best friend/Avatar on a random Ember Island cove?— Katara is staring at her reflection in a still tidal pool.

It’s getting late in the day. She needs to return to the villa before long but she’s watching tears track down her cheeks, collect in a salty mess under her chin before splashing to the ground. She wasn’t prepared for how much she would miss Izumi and Kana and Ito. It hurts in strange ways— it hurts in absences. There are things she wants to show, wants to share and teach and they’re not here.

Only Zuko.

Katara cries harder at the thought.

She cries because she’s afraid that she doesn’t know how to be with the man she married anymore without their children between them.

## A Waterbender’s Wanderings II

She is tempted to find the Disaster Relief Commissioner before getting home— she just knows there’s something she can be doing to help the devastated community of Ember Island— but she made Zuko swear not to work.

She can hardly be the one to break the promise.

She does, however, buy half a dozen seaweed dumplings from a heartbreakingly sweet boy and girl. It’s twenty coppers for the half dozen but she winks at them despite her melancholy mood and slips them ten gold pieces over their mother’s protest.

‘It’s the least I can do,’ she tells the other woman, thinking of her own children’s joy at being rewarded for hard work. ‘Please let me.’

The mother studies her anxiously for a long moment. ‘Alright. Thank you. What do we say, Umi?’

Umi and her brother both bow clumsily. ‘Thank you very much, lady.’

On the way home, Katara tries one of the dumplings and her skin shivers. That’s more salt than even Gran Gran ever dared use on the plainest Water Tribe fare. As her stomach turns, Katara guiltily stuffs the dumplings in the nearest bin.

Spirits know Zuko would never humour her long enough to eat them.

## A Waterbender’s Wanderings III

Zuko isn’t inside when she arrives back at the villa an hour before sunset.

‘Welcome back, Lady Katara,’ Rashi greets her when she finds the Firelady searching the living room and courtyard for the Firelord. ‘His majesty is taking his ease.’

‘His ease?’

‘Napping, my lady.’

‘Oh.’ Katara is so stunned that Rashi can take her hat and bag from her without complaint. She peers through the living room door, the far one that leads to the royal family’s sleeping quarters, peers through it like she could see which bed he is in. ‘Rashi?’

The bright-eyed attendant pokes her head back into the living room. ‘Yes, my lady?’

‘Is… Where is the Firelord, erm, taking his ease?’

‘Oh.’ Rashi’s expression softens some, or perhaps its pity. Katara’s shoulder droop. ‘In the, ah, in his childhood quarters.’

Katara just nods, turning away so the older woman won’t see the new tears brimming in her eyes.

‘May I assist you with anything else, Lady Katara? Can I get you anything?’

The waterbender shakes her head. ‘No, thank you. I’ll be… I’ll be in my room until dinner.’

Katara walks away so she doesn’t see the attendant silently sigh, grief in every line of the older woman’s face.

## Not Seeing Eye to Eye I

Somehow, Zuko’s lighter mood over dinner makes Katara’s blood boil.

‘And I bumped into Aang,’ he finishes recounting his day, the seafood on his plate picked at but not consumed. ‘Can you believe it? He heard about the fires and dodged Immigration to come lend a hand.’

She chews her noodles to give her anger time to cool. ‘Wow. Did you invite him to drop by? We could have had him over for dinner.’

‘I did.’ He sips at his wine. Gulped at it. ‘He seemed really eager to help the victims of the fires. He said to tell you hi though.’

Katara is gripping her chopsticks so tightly her hand starts to cramp. ‘He said… to _tell_ me hi?’

‘Yes.’

She knows it’s not Zuko’s fault but for the love of— ‘He couldn’t come tell me himself?’

Zuko watches her cautiously, his throat bobbing as he swallows. ‘I told him you’d be mad.’

‘How _kind_ of you, Zuko. Should I thank you for making the effort?!’

An ugly silence falls over the dinner table. It settles in, stretches, and dampens the mood with all the force of a monsoon.

## Not Seeing Eye to Eye II

‘I told him to come see you.’

‘Yeah, I heard you the first time.’

‘I only saw him for about five minutes.’

‘Great, Zuko! Just great!’

He looks at her with caution, like she’s a sabretooth moose lion about to strike and maybe she is. She’s borne the brunt of his bad mood for the last two weeks or more and she’s quickly discovering she can’t— she _won’t_ — any longer.

‘Why are you mad at me? I wanted him to come and see you. Besides, I was only out for an hour or two, you’ve been gone the whole day.’

‘Only an hour or two, hm?’

‘Yes! Then I came home and had a sleep, whereas you’ve been—’

‘Where did you sleep?’ she asks in a voice that trembles with barely restrained emotion. It feels something like bloodbending— illicit and uncontrollable. Katara realises too late that she’s on her feet. ‘This afternoon? Where did you sleep?’

He’s standing too but he backs down at her question, crosses his arms over his chest and glares at the curry between them. ‘In my old room.’

‘Right! And where did you sleep last night?’

‘My old room.’

## Not Seeing Eye to Eye III

He takes these verbal jabs she throws at him and his lips tighten but the Zuko she knows would be hurling tables and fighting back and he just… doesn’t. This Zuko is different. He slinks away to another room to sleep and stays silent when he should speak and barely looks her in the eye.

Barely looks at her at all.

Katara’s heart breaks just a bit when she realises: she doesn’t understand what’s going on anymore. It terrifies her, this distance he’s putting between them.

Her eyes well up but she’ll die before she lets _this_ Zuko see her tears.

‘Take a guess where you’ll sleep tonight,’ she snarls as she turns and storms from the room. It’s closer to a retreat than a storming, really. But it’s easier to feel like she’s not falling apart if she holds to anger instead of fear; if she’s the towering storm rather than confused, heartsick, and lonely.

## Fear I

She cries silently. Sitting on the floor, slumped against her empty bed, her shoulders shake, her breath rasps but she presses her face into the crook of her elbow and lets her anger fade to grief and fear.

_I don’t know who he is anymore._

_I’m scared we don’t work anymore._

_I’m scared._

Sometime later, footsteps sound outside the bedroom door. There’s a weighty pause before the visitor knocks hesitantly at the door. It could be Rashi or one of the girls, come to turn down her bed.

Katara’s heart is in her throat.

She wipes her tears away with the skirt of her dress and rises.

Silently, she crosses the bedroom floor.

Just as quietly, she ducks out the open veranda door and flees to the beach.

## Fear II

Zuko finishes his wine in the wake of Katara’s departure from the dinner table. He’s never been one to turn to spirits in the wake of disaster, but he has precious little space inside of him for his honour while the serpent grows fat behind his ribs.

He finishes his wine in a matter of seconds, wincing.

When he hears the bedroom door slam, he grits his teeth and refills the cup, draining it a second time.

There’s a pleasant buzz at the base of his skull that’s beginning to drown out the serpent’s recount of his failures, large and small. He’s tempted to pour another glass to speed it on.

Zuko studies the crystal glass in hand, its emptiness, its translucence. Beyond it sits a tea set. A jade green pot of peppermint and two matching cups, small enough to sit comfortably in the palm of one hand.

Slamming the glass down, his heart in his throat, Zuko stands with the tea tray and makes for the bedroom he hasn’t yet shared with his wife.

## Memories of Ba Sing Se

Once— a million years ago it seems to Zuko— he and Katara had spent nights in masks and paints on Ba Sing Se rooftops, drinking tea and learning to love an enemy. He’d held to those memories during the years apart, those six long years when another woman held his name and shared his bed, held to them like a light in the dark when the polarity in his government or the civil unrest following the economy’s collapse felt like enough to overwhelm him. He would catch himself in meetings with the war industry remembering the curiosity in her eyes when he told her about his homeland, order mangoes out of season when Izumi and Katara left to visit Mai’s family home in the north.

What he rarely dwelt on was her rejection, the times she’d left him out in the cold.

The night he’d brought a tea box to their twilight rendezvous, chosen with care from his Uncle’s stores, and she’d scoffed, ‘We’re not really the sort of people who would drink tea together.’

The time they’d shared dinner and stories of their upbringings before she’d backed away from his touch under the gate to Ba Sing Se’s Middle Ring.

Defeat settles over Zuko like the snows of the South Pole when she doesn’t answer his knock at the bedroom door. He steels himself for the wounds she can raise with words and opens the door on an empty bedroom.

## Rooftop Tea on the Beach I

_She does not want you_ , the serpent coos, coiling languidly around his heart. _She’s taken your measure and found you lacking_.

In his hands, the teacups are rattling on the tray.

It takes Zuko sometime to find his voice. ‘Katara?’

_Water is the element of change_ , the serpent hisses and there’s a familiar cruel relish to its tone. _Feelings change like the tide_.

The door that opens onto the beach is ajar, he can see moonlit sands beyond, a light wind whistling into the room. The breeze tugs at his pants, the robe of his shirt. _Come_ , it whispers.

The serpent laughs at him when he obeys. _Pathetic_ , it pronounces in his father’s voice.

## Rooftop Tea on the Beach II

She’s sitting on what remains of the timber pier, dress up around her hips, her feet trailing in the water. Her hands are gripping the weather beaten boards, they are anchors that she hunches over as she draws patterns in the unsettled sea foam with her toes.

Zuko’s mouth is dry as he sets down the tea tray beside her. Silently, he sits. She lifts her head, stares out over the bay but says nothing. Perhaps that’s best. He feels tongue tied, like he doesn’t know what to say to her anymore.

He breathes deeply for a moment, searching for peace among the ever expanding coils of serpent in his chest. _Pathetic_ , the voice whispers.

Katara raises her hand and wipes at her cheeks, sniffling.

Zuko, stones in his stomach, sets the two teacups right way up and pours until both are full. The scent of peppermint interrupts the salty sea air. Setting down the pot, gently— _I’m sorry_ , he wants the gesture to say— he takes the first cup and offers it to his wife.

She wipes at the other cheek then takes it. ‘Thank you.’

Her hands are cold. ‘You’re welcomes.’

## Rooftop Tea on the Beach III

‘I miss the kids,’ she croaks after a single sip of tea. The wind is pulling at her hair, but she doesn’t seem to notice or care that its whipping at her face.

Zuko nods and holds the tea in both hands; he wants to smooth her hair back, press it out of the way. ‘Me too.’

Katara nods and more tears trickle down her face. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice cracks and she turns her head away, trembling. ‘I’m sorry about dinner. It’s not your fault that Aang… I’m sorry for yelling at you.’

He shouldn’t, but somehow Zuko feels he deserved it. ‘It’s alright.’

‘No, it’s not!’ She sets her cup down on the tray and wipes at her eyes. ‘There’s nothing right about this.’

Fear laps at Zuko’s heart; the serpent rejoices. He makes himself ask it, forces it out in a whisper. ‘Do you want to go home?’

He doesn’t mean the palace.

She turns to him then, frowning. ‘No.’

The relief is heady. ‘Some holiday, huh?’ he tries to joke.

Katara gives a shaky laugh. ‘Relaxing,’ she agrees.

## Reconciliation

The tenuous peace holds.

Zuko sleeps in the master bedroom that night.

Once they finish their tea, Katara takes a bath while he retrieves the book he’d started earlier that day. He’s sitting on his side of the bed when she returns, hair piled on top of her head and exhaustion in every line on her face.

He doesn’t miss the slight smile when she sees him there, under the covers. ‘What are you reading?’

He shows her the front cover. ‘ _Botsudo’s Compendium of Ember Island Mythology_.’

She hangs up her robe on the back of the door. ‘Anything good?’

‘I might have found a reason for the fire.’

Katara slides under the covers, her toes tentatively brushing his. ‘Tell me.’

‘ _The Kasai Spirit of Ember Island returns every century to cleanse Fire Nation shores,_ ’ he reads, flexing hit foot against her. ‘ _In the age of dragons and sea serpents, the Kasai Spirit brought fire and life to those who had need of rejuvenation, for fire is the element of life._ Do you want me to keep reading?’

‘Sure.’ She leans her cheek against his arm, eyes already closed. ‘But do the voices.’

Zuko read. Katara slept. He did the voices anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maximum angst here, I know. Don't worry, next chapter we pull a tight u-turn (or, more accurately, a messy af three-point turn) on the angst and tension. Change is coming :)


	5. v. Day Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so excited about this chapter!!!!!!!!!!!! We’ve ridden the angst train for these moments, people. I would so so love to hear your thoughts in the comments/reviews!
> 
> Now. Ahem. About that rating? Though I know you teenagers won’t listen, I wouldn’t have at that age, please only read the following drabbles if you are sixteen and over: A Much Needed Conversation I, II & III & A Reprieve from the Words I, II & III
> 
> They are explicit and though they contain some important character development, I can summarise it for you in the end note if you choose not to read! I promise character development, shenanigans, and grown up situations in this chapter. Please read accordingly.

# v. Day Four

## The Sleeping Sickness

The sleeping sickness— his mind and body exhausted but unable to get more than a few meagre hours sleep— means Zuko wakes earlier than he would like. But he’s done so for the last few months; this lack of sleep began long before his bending withered away to nothing, painting permanent bruises under his eyes. It’s barely dawn; the low light makes the new pale furnishings appear almost ghostly.

Beside him, Katara is curled into his side, her slow, even breaths warming his shoulder.

His chest still feels heavy, but the serpent is silent, absent. He doesn’t move, soaking up these rare few moments of peace and considers the last few days.

There’s a clatter somewhere in the house, a voice raised in rebuke, then quiet.

Beyond the bedroom window, a swallow-parrot sings.

Zuko rolls onto his side, gently sliding one arm under the pillow and laying the other around the waterbender’s waist. Tired, he closes his eyes and rests his nose against her sleep-mussed hair.

He doesn’t sleep, but there’s something approaching peace within him as the sun rises.

## In the Serpent’s Absence I

Zuko catches Shi and Kiwaki before they lay the table for breakfast. ‘Outdoors, your majesty?’ Shi asks, glancing around him to the small table on the deck.

‘Don’t worry about the table piece.’ He follows the trajectory of their stare; it wouldn’t fit anyway. ‘It’s a beautiful morning for outdoor dining, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Definitely,’ Kiwaki agrees, wincing when her friend elbows her side. ‘What? He asked.’

The serpent has yet to awaken and so Zuko smiles at the two girls; they’re not much older than he was when he’d fought his sister under the power of a comet. ‘Where is the table setting kept?’

‘Um, in this cupboard, my lord.’

Zuko has already opened the walnut doors when the maids realise his intention. ‘Firelord Zuko!’ Kiwaki exclaims.

‘My lord, we are more than happy to set the outdoor table for breakfast!’ Shi protests, trying to take the plates from him.

He holds them up out of their reach. ‘Why don’t you two bring out the napkins and chopsticks?’ he calls over his shoulder as he opens the back door and continues outside.

## In the Serpent’s Absence II

Rashi appears while Zuko is boiling water over the stove. ‘Firelord Zuko?’

‘Good morning, Rashi.’

She searches the empty kitchen, her expression uneasy. ‘May your servants assist—’

‘Not at all. I’m just making a pot of tea for Katara.’

‘My lord—’

‘She should be awake by now,’ he comments as though the attendant isn’t squirming with discomfort at her Firelord lowering himself to make his own tea. ‘Would you mind asking her to breakfast?’

Shi walks in then, a cleaning rag in hand and Rashi levels her with a stern look. ‘Shi, would you assist our lord with his—’

The kettle’s whistle interrupts them. Rashi reaches for it, but Zuko waves her away, taking the sputtering pot off the flames and pouring it into the jade teapot. The scent of Jasmine billows into the air. ‘I wanted to make her majesty’s tea this morning, ladies. I hope I have not caused offense.’

Both women sputter to assure him that nothing of the sort has taken place; he feels himself smile at their fluster and places a pair of teacups on the tray.

‘I’ll be on the deck,’ he tells them, nodding a bow as he walks past, stunned silence in his wake.

## In the Serpent’s Absence III

The late summer sun doesn’t reach the deck until midday, leaving the small wooden table in cool, dappled shade. Zuko stares into the lush, unburnt garden foliage, his attention internal, on the inner flame he’s attempting to breathe into life.

‘I don’t know what you did, but Rashi is rattled this morning,’ his wife yawns as she takes the seat opposite him. She’s in a loose white dress, her feet bare and hair free around her shoulders. He feels his inner fire briefly flicker at the sight of her.

‘Good morning.’

Katara gives him a sleepy smile. ‘Good morning.’

She reaches for the teapot, but he beats her to it. ‘Everyone keeps trying to serve me tea today.’

As though hiding a smile, his wife bites her lip. ‘Oh?’

‘That’s why Rashi’s upset.’

‘You made the tea’

‘I’m more than capable of making a pot of tea.’

She flat out grins this time. ‘Your uncle would be so proud to hear you say that.’

## Breakfast in the Sun I

The maids deliver their food and Katara dismisses them for the day over their protests. ‘I’ve already told Rashi. The household are entitled to a day off. Go on, the Festival of Molten Sun is today, girls. Go enjoy yourselves.’

Shi and Kiwaki glance between their Firelady and Lord. ‘Are you sure, Lady Katara?’

‘We might yet survive without you,’ she assures them with a wink. ‘Go on. Enjoy the festival.’

Shi beams, a faint blush in her pale cheeks. ‘Thank you, Lady Katara.’

‘Thank you!’ Kiwaki echoes and they both bow low before hurrying back into the house, giggling.

Zuko raises a brow at his wife.

‘Shi’s meeting her new boyfriend at the festival, it’s their first date,’ she explains, dipping her finger into the chilli sauce by the fish. ‘Do you remember our first date?’

‘Do you mean the first time we ran nights together? Or the Ba Sing Se noodle bar?’

Katara grins, her eyes sparkling. ‘I guess we did have two first dates.’

## Breakfast in the Sun II

‘You stole one of my prawn crabs.’

‘Well you were glaring at me.’

‘Because you slurped your noodles.’

Katara laughs, high and bright as though he’s shocked it out of her. ‘Water Tribe.’

Zuko is smiling down at his food; it’s delicious. ‘You told me you were a princess when we walked back to the Middle Ring gate.’

‘Well you kept calling me a peasant.’ She grinned around a mouthful of steamed dumpling.

‘I was nervous.’

‘So you insult your date?’

He feels his cheeks heat, even twelve years later. ‘I was trying to figure out how to kiss you.’

‘Poor Zuko.’ She’s smiling fondly, palm propping up her chin. ‘I knew you wanted to, but I was still so confused.’

That’s right. She had not long known his true identity, had only recently come to accept the face behind the Blue Spirit’s mask. Zuko studies the faraway look in her eyes; she’s back there, under the gate to Ba Sing Se’s Middle Ring, watching two teenagers stumble into love in a world at war.

‘It feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?’

She glances over, eyes quick, reading him. ‘Can I ask you something?’

## Breakfast in the Sun III

‘Of course.’

‘Last week, during the Feast Day of the Painted Lady…’ She pauses but he knows where this is going. The little heat he’d breathed back into his body is smothered by the serpent’s sliding return. ‘When we were sitting by Mai’s grave.’

Zuko puts his chopsticks down, nodding once.

‘I asked you why you’d been going there recently, and you said… You told me it’s because Mai never fought with you the way I do.’

He closes his eyes, shame eating at him. He did say that. He said that.

‘I know that something’s… not right. I’ve known for a while. You’ve not been yourself. Tui and La know that work has been crippling recently, the recession has been…’ She just shakes her head; they both know just how hard the recession has been on their people. ‘I know it feels like everything needs more from us, more time and energy and resources—’

‘Katara.’

‘Wait, let me finish. I know it’s been a difficult time. I just wish you wouldn’t wall me out.’ Her eyes are bright now, shining. ‘We used to be each other’s strength, remember? When it became too dark for me, you were our light and vice versa. I want you to know you can talk to me about these things. Anything.’

It makes him angry, these words. Another thing, something else expected from him. ‘I thought we were here on vacation from the issues at home.’

Katara stares at him blankly; her hands grip each other tightly. ‘You wept in my arms that night, Zuko. I can’t just forget that.’

## The Serpent IV

_Weak_ , the serpent with his father’s voice snickers. _Pathetic_. The creature in his chest draws on every memory, all the ways his nation is struggling. All the ways he is failing them, his people. The new wave of homelessness that they can’t adequately house in this economy, the empty marketplaces and hollow-eyed vendors, the reparations that still have to be paid from a treasury buckling under their weight. The injustice that it is the most vulnerable of his people suffering the pinch, not the nobles who financed and profited from a hundred years of war, the ones he _still_ can’t touch even now. Those who will never pay for their crimes because he cannot afford to lose any more revenue from their estates.

Zuko straightens his spine against the shame he feels at these failures, at the memory of those graveside tears. ‘My apologies for burdening you that night.’

His wife swears with words their four year old is about ten years too young to know. ‘You know that’s not what I mean!’

Does he?

He frowns at the half eaten meal on his plate. ‘I should go get ready for the festival.’

Katara’s eyes tighten as he stands. ‘Zuko…’

‘I won’t be long.’

‘ _Zuko_.’

He doesn’t answer, only collects their plates, dropping them in the kitchen sink on his retreat to the bedroom.

## The Festival of Molten Sun I

The Festival of Molten Sun is held at the end of the growing season to welcome the oncoming of winter. As such, all who attend the revelries are required to wear bright summer reds, oranges, yellows but plain wooden masks the colour of bleached driftwood.

Zuko doesn’t pull his hair back in its usual top knot so that his recognisable scar is entirely hidden by the half mask and his shaggy hair. He’s dressed in the light island pants that cinch at his ankles and a yellow trimmed maroon vest that leaves his sister’s lightning scar visible.

Katara meets him by the front door, resplendent in a buttercup skirt and black sarashi that leaves her shoulders bare to the sun.

He hands her the traditional mask in silence, his own already in place.

She takes it, brushing past him and out the door.

The Festival of Molten Sun is a time of slowing down, of preparing for the season where even plants stop growing to await the return of summer.

Despite the summery day, its wintery again between them as they walk into town.

## The Festival of Molten Sun II

There are dragons dancing around the festival plaza; it has not been untouched by the fires but the bamboo pavilions are decorated with a thousand red flag embroidered with prayers for the coming cool season. The dragons buck and whirl, children chase at their tails, pull at their fabric sides and reveal the dozen legs beneath— the people who clothed themselves in a dragon’s skin to celebrate the summer and thank Agni for his gifts.

Jangling bells and deep toomba drums compete with the chanting of Fire Sages and the sizzle of festival food. There is smoke in the air and the scent of paprika, cumin, frying fish and incense.

Dancers welcome the stream of folk to the festival with a series of ancient firebender forms. As they draw closer, Zuko recognises the dancing dragon form he and Aang learned from the Sun Warriors.

Under their masks, the Firelord and Lady enter the Festival of Molten Sun.

## The Avatar & the Waterbender I

The morning has long since become afternoon when Katara grabs Zuko’s arm and points at a gathering crowd, cheering around a sky bison.

Not just any sky bison.

‘Aang!’ she exclaims, then rolls her eyes when she sees what the Avatar is preoccupied doing. ‘That damn spinning marble trick…’

Zuko cranes his neck to see and sure enough, their friend is happily entertaining the crowd by making a series of beach balls circle Appa’s throat like a necklace. The bison grumbles his displeasure but Aang only laughs, his voice sailing over the crowd as only an airbender’s could, ‘Don’t worry, buddy! They’re filled with air; they can’t hurt you!’

Katara chuckles, her eyes bright. ‘I’m going to go say hello!’

The serpent has no interest in being under the too-perceptive gaze of the Avatar. ‘Say hi from me. I’m going to get a pork dumpling.’ He considers the vegetarian Avatar. ‘Don’t tell him that.’

She smiles but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘Okay, come find us when you’re done.’

‘Do you want one?’

‘One? I haven’t eaten since breakfast.’

He draws her nearer and presses a kiss to her cheek below the lip of her mask. ‘Seven, then? Seven’s an auspicious number in the Fire Nation.’

She laughs at that. ‘Seven might be testing even Sokka’s ability to eat.’

## The Avatar & the Waterbender II

Aang’s grey eyes light up like lightning stuck clouds. ‘Katara!’

He brings his arms down in a sweeping motion and the crowd parts with a _whoosh_ of wind and the Avatar zooms eagerly towards his friend.

She grins and returns the enthusiastic hug. ‘Hi Aang!’

The young man laughs and spins her around, the edge of his festival mask bumping hers. ‘Do you want to show everyone our dance?’

‘What?’

He tugs at her while the crowd watches on. ‘Our dance! The dance!’

She resists the Avatar’s energetic pull. ‘Aang, no!’ she laughs but instead of feeling lighter for her friend’s easy humour, she feels the pall hanging heavily over her all the more.

The airbender huffs but turns the gathered people of Ember Island. ‘Thanks for watching, folks, but the shows over!’

Katara catches a smile in her palm; somethings never change.

## The Avatar & the Waterbender III

‘I saw Zuko yesterday,’ he mentions casually, off-handed, as he loosens Appa’s reins.

The hurt from last night isn’t as pungent but it still makes itself known. ‘He mentioned.’

‘Are you really mad?’

‘I was hurt. Why wouldn’t you want to come see me?’

The crowd has dispersed mostly, though a few people still mill about, eyes on the man with blue tattoos instead of hair. The Avatar flashes them a smile before gesturing his friend closer. ‘I thought you might need some time.’

Katara frowns but doesn’t reply.

‘Is he seeing doctor?’

‘A doctor?’

‘For the… you know… Wait, you don’t know?’ Aang stops fiddling with the bison’s reins, his grey eyes troubled. ‘Monkey feathers, I thought that was why you guys were here.’

Something in her gut clenches, something deeper than bending and thoughts and fiscal negotiations. Something blind that could see with certainty, the part of her that knew when she was being lied to or when her children were in trouble. ‘Aang. What do you know?’

## The Avatar & the Waterbender IV

‘The monk’s used to call it chakra _amm_.’

Katara’s throat is closed, winter sea ice that sunk even the strongest ships. She swallows against the fear and grabs the Avatar by his sleeve, hauling him around Appa, down to the emptying beach.

‘Katara!’

‘Shh!’ She tugs him after her, glancing around. ‘No one is meant to know I’m here.’

Aang tries a smile though it doesn’t reach his eye. ‘Incognito mode. Nice!’

There are a group of children squealing and running like the gulls out beyond the shoreline— too far away to hear. ‘What is chakra _amm_?’ The airbender kicks a clod of sand, grimly; Katara’s heart joins the thickness in her throat. ‘What is it, Aang?’

‘It’s a sickness that’s caused by a bender’s chakras being… blocked.’

‘Blocked?’

‘Yep.’

Her brain is trying to catch up to the nauseous unease in her gut. ‘But your chakras were blocked after Azula shot you in Ba Sing Se? You weren’t sick. You got better.’

Aang’s expression is pitying— _pitying_ — when he looks at her then. ‘Not that kind of blocked.’

## The Avatar & the Waterbender V

‘Blocked _how_ , Aang?’

The Avatar is silent for a handful of moments but Katara wants to shake him, shake the words from him. Fear is a cold, cold companion in those long silent seconds. ‘Each chakra rules different parts of the body’s energy. Earth, water, fire, air, sound, light, thought— these are the chakras in Air Nomad culture.’ He points out a line down his torso, from the crown of his head to the base of his spine. ‘Everyone gets blockages in their chakras from time to time, making their chi flow sluggishly.’

Katara’s pulse is racing. Aang is about to tell her something awful, she knows it before the words leave her friend’s mouth. He’s about to tell her something terrible.

‘Sometimes, in some people, the blockages are particularly strong. The body’s flow of chi… stops entirely. And when left untreated, things… grow.’

‘In the chakras?’

His probing gaze finds hers. ‘In the chakras. Do you know what blocks the chakras, Katara?’

She doesn’t.

Aang’s frown is worried; the happy young man of moments ago replaced by this concerned severity. ‘Fear,’ he begins, holding his hand over his base. ‘Guilt. Shame. Grief. Lies and illusions.’ The airbender’s hand rises with each word, hovering over each chakra.

_Fear_ , she thinks and her withdrawn husband beside Mai’s graveside sits in her mind’s eye. _Guilt, shame, grief_.

‘What happens to people with chakra _amm_ , Aang?’

## The Avatar & the Waterbender VI

‘He can get better, Katara.’

‘What happens?’ she snaps, stepping closer. ‘What happens if the chakras aren’t unblocked?’

The compassion in Aang’s eyes only makes her heart beat faster. ‘If left untreated, _amm_ grow in the chakras. _Amm_ … they’re little sores, growths, that can cut you off from your bending, make you sleepless, tired, irritable, sometimes there’s vomiting, cold sweats, bleeding…’ Aang pauses to blink at the ground. ‘In extreme cases, they will change your personality, weaken you physically and emotionally… eventually kill you.’

Katara’s eyes close at the word.

_No…_

‘He can get better,’ Aang is saying and launches into some story about a young acolyte whose sky bison was killed, sending him into a particularly severe bout of chakra _amm_. But Katara has stopped listening.

She’s remembering how Zuko has cancelled every one of their weekly sparring dates. How much they’ve been fighting. How the circles under his eyes have become permanent. How he no longer fights, how he gives up, how he silently weathers her when once he would have…

_Change your personality. Weaken you physically. Emotionally._

_Eventually kill you_.

Katara closes her eyes and pulls on every scree of strength to hold in her scream.

## The Avatar & the Waterbender VII

‘Katara?’

She jerks her head from left to right. _No_.

The airbender hovers nervously, his hands twisting together. ‘He might not have it! I only spoke to him for five minutes yesterday! I’m probably wrong!’

Katara shakes her head again, drawing herself straight, blinking up at the empty, late summer sky. ‘Three nights ago, one of the household staff saw him vomit on the beach,’ she mutters, her mind numb as frostbitten fingers.

‘One symptom. Only one—’

‘He barely sleeps, he’s irritable, tired all the time, wakes up in cold sweats almost every night.’ She lists the damning evidence with a composure she didn’t have before a crown of flame sat upon her head. There’s something to be said for the Fire Nation’s lessons, she thinks in that moment, the cold strength she learned from a country of flames. Her body shakes but she breathes herself calm.

For now.

‘He hasn’t been himself at all this year and these last few months…’ There isn’t a cloud in the sky, nothing to blunt the sun’s beating heat. ‘I haven’t seen him bend in months, Aang.’

The children further down the beach scream and poke a blubbering jellyfish, their voices high and gleeful.

Beside her, the Avatar is silent.

## The Avatar & the Waterbender VIII

‘Can you heal him?’

The monk blinks, confusion coloured into the very pores of his skin. ‘Me?’

‘It’s his chi that’s sick. That’s Avatar territory.’

But Aang is shaking his head and glancing off over her shoulder. Zuko is standing beside Appa back at the edge of the festival, scratching the bison’s chin. ‘No, it’s not.’

She rounds on him, glaring. ‘What do you mean? Of course, it is!’

‘The monks always called for waterbenders when someone came down with chakra _amm_ ,’ he tells her quickly for the Firelord is approaching now, one hand carrying a parcel of dumplings, the other raised in greeting. ‘Energy follows the physical, Katara, chi follows flesh. It always has. I don’t know how they did it, the Southern waterbenders from a hundred years ago, but it wasn’t as Avatar.’

She comports her expression, shelves her distress even as she despises this trust Aang has in her abilities.

Katara has never felt less capable of helping those she loves.

## The Festival of Molten Sun III

Back in the hallowed ground of the plaza— marked by a black and red alter— the festival is drawing to a close.

‘Early nightfall. Crisp mornings. The sharp silhouette of leaf-bare branches.’ The Sage speaking is dressed in robes of dark maroon; with hair pale as bone and age worn so deeply into her skin, she is death personified. She is the willing walk into winter’s embrace for without the cold, dark days there cannot be summer sun.

Katara, a daughter of the South Pole, understands this intimately.

‘A time where the spirits ask us to turn inwards, become quiet and introspective, stay home, sleeping longer.’ The Sage’s wizened mouth grins. ‘A time to rest our bones, let the past year’s burdens die so that, come spring, we may grow life again!’

Aang is nodding devoutly, a spark of longing in his eye. Katara wonders if the words remind him of the spiritual philosophies of his people.

‘We gather here at sunset to thank Agni for his summer’s bounty,’ the Sage intones and all in attendance bow their heads. ‘We thank the summer with gratitude in our hearts and welcome the coming winter.’

In tandem, a thousand candles spark into flame; Aang lights the three pale lanterns he holds, passing one to Zuko, the other to Katara. The Sage bows to the crowd and, when she looks up again, Katara’s lips tingle; the old woman stares straight at her.

‘We welcome this time of rest where we feed the spirit and nurture the soul.’

## The Serpent V

As Zuko and Katara take their leave of their friend and the Festival of Molten Sun, quiet and twilight fall alongside them. The path is moonlit and the low light hides the fire’s devastation in the jungle landscape.

Zuko thinks of the final ritual of this festival day— the spring fed hot baths back at the palace, how the citrus scents the water— and feels empty.

The serpent mocks his maudlin mood.

Katara’s voice is soft as the powdery Ember Island sands as she begins filling the silence between them. ‘Do you know what could be fun?’ she says in a tone more at home at gravesides. ‘Bending. Why don’t we spar, hm? We haven’t done that in months.’

Hidden behind her mask, he doesn’t catch the searching way she watches him for a response.

She’s the element of water and that is what Zuko sees— he feels her try to soothe and cool. But he is the Firelord who’s lost his bending. _No son of mine…_ Shame is the serpent’s bread and butter and shame makes him do and say things he would banish others for saying to his wife.

‘Don’t you have anything better to do? Just leave me alone, Katara.’ He throws the words at her as they reach the front porch and doesn’t stick around to see them land.

He can’t avoid the shame though.

It settles over his heart to the tune of the wounded silence at his back.

## The Tide’s Turning I

He should have known his waterbender would not remain in that place of warm, forgiving shallows for long. No. He’s jolted out of the beginnings of a nightmare when she bangs open the bedroom door and brings the deep seas.

‘I give up!’ she yells and slams the door loud enough to rival thunder. It bounces back open in protest. ‘I can’t pretend anymore, Zuko! I _won’t!_ I break my back covering your meetings on top of mine all last week _and_ I organise this trip so we can finally have some _time_ to figure things out and you won’t even look me in the eye!’ She laughs here, sharp and humourless as a shipwreck. ‘Worse! You look at me like I’m the source of all your problems! Like I’m nothing, like we’re nothing! The way you’ve been _talking_ to me…’

He cannot look at her as her words catch on tears. With shaking hands, she grips her hair and actually sobs— broken, frustrated, heartbreaking sobs.

‘I don’t know what else to do,’ she gasps and his own heart feels heavy as stone. ‘I _hate_ whatever this is, and I _hate_ that I can’t fix it. It’s like you don’t care… It’s like you’re not even trying.’

_You never used to give up without a fight_ , her unspoken words say into the bruising silence. _I can’t keep fighting for both of us without you_.

## The Tide’s Turning II

Once, Zuko thought to himself that he would gladly be drowned by this waterbender, if only he could do right by her, keep her by his side, strengthening her as he, in turn, is strengthened. They had been younger, a war still shadowing the blooming trust between them, but even then— _even then_ — he would have willingly drowned in his waterbender.

But not like this. This drowning? It breaks him.

No...

She doesn’t break _him_. The ice in his chest is breaking; it’s the serpent she silences.

## The Tide’s Turning III

The shame bowls him over at first. He isn’t strong enough for this; he isn’t as strong as his waterbender. His father’s voice begins to tell him this, but another voice— one far wiser, full of anecdotes on tea and women— interrupts.

His wiser self, his higher self, always speaks in this voice of his uncle. Perhaps that was what the serpent’s cold bloodedness had been icing away: The voice that reminds him of his worth. His honour.

Zuko’s wife is sobbing, each shattered breath hitting him with the force of thrown knives; his skin punctures, his insides rupture.

—A memory: His mother weeping silently after his father stormed from their chambers. A chill traces its way down Zuko’s spine: No, he will not play out his father’s legacy—

Though it feels like choking, though he isn’t sure he has the right to, he finds his voice. Speaks her name.

‘Katara.’

She doesn’t look up. She requires more of him.

Zuko wrestles the shame and wins. His feet find the floor.

Slowly he approaches the waterbender whom he’s brought to tears.

‘Katara.’

She looks up then; blue eyes shining and as rimmed red as his scar. She destroys him with the hurt he finds scribbled into the gentle curve of her mouth; the wariness in her eyes.

He’s never had a way with words.

But the sound she makes when he kisses her assures him his message is received loud and clear.

## A Much-Needed Conversation I

Before arriving on the island, before leaving the palace, Zuko thought to himself: _I have nothing more to give. I’m so burned out I can’t even conjure a flicker of flame. I’m nothing. I’m a husk. A failure_.

But as Katara comes alive under his hands, he finds he has internal resources he didn’t know he didn’t know.

The waterbender bows under the deep and bruising kiss. There is softness too, a line he returns to when they must stop and gasp for breath. A line filled with the gentlest tug of her bottom lip between his teeth, the lightest barely-there touch along her side that makes her tremble, an interlude of nothing more than his lips plucking lovingly at her own.

But then the softness is not enough. Too slow. Too little.

And the woman in his arms is _burning_.

‘Yes,’ she gasps, begs— and she _never_ begs. Never. ‘Please.’

Something inside of him thrills.

He spills her over onto the woven carpet, lowers her with the kind of reverence reserved for gods and goddesses who cannot hold a flame to the woman he rules his nation beside.

‘Not yet,’ he hears his voice— hoarse and dark— reply as he lifts her skirt and _finally_ kisses the soft skin of her thighs.

Her gasp pours liquid magma down his spine. He is drunk, absolutely mind-altered, by how she writhes against his hands and mouth. ‘Zuko…’

_Yes_ , he thinks feverishly, uncontrollably, pushing her Fire Nation red underpants aside like a prospector striking gold. _Yes_.

## A Much-Needed Conversation II

There’s something suspended between them, something that the smallest action could ignite, consecrate, or break. The tension is delicious. It sweeps him away until all thoughts of serpents and firebending and the crippling recession are gone. _Obliterated_.

‘I can’t,’ she cries when his lips return to the seam between her thighs to coax her back upwards, to draw pleasure in her spent body once again. ‘I can’t again!’

She can.

He hasn’t been hard in _months_. Hasn’t been able to stir himself to even consider the depravity he forces from his wife. It _hurts_ how hard he is now. He grinds himself against the floor as the taste of Katara’s dripping centre sends pleasure like electricity to his crotch.

He hasn’t been able to stir himself in months and now his wife is flushed and sobbing as her third orgasm makes her hips and legs jerk like puppets on strings.

He is nearly delirious. The only coherent thought: greedy, primitive glee at the sheen of tears and glazed look in her eyes.

He has to taste them.

## A Much-Needed Conversation III

‘Shh,’ he whispers to her, kissing the salty tears as she shudders and laughs, giddy and lose-limbed and perfect. She is perfect. ‘Why are you crying?’

These tears are different to the awful ones of an hour ago. These tears shimmer with promise.

‘Overwhelmed,’ she mutters, running her fingers bonelessly through his hair. ‘Happy.’ And then, hesitantly: ‘Relieved.’

He ducks his head to kiss her stomach. Once. Then again.

‘I love you,’ he whispers against the collection of proud scars his children have left on her body.

He hasn’t been this hard in _months_.

‘I love you too,’ she tells him and rolls him onto his back like a predator that’s finally brought down her prey. ‘Let me show you.’

## A Much-Needed Conversation IV

Afterwards, they lay side by side in a mess of their own making and kiss like they did as teenagers. Unlike then, they know with the confidence of experience how to follow the other’s lead; how to trade roles and ignite that slower passion.

The one that sends the shrinking serpent in Zuko’s chest into a hole so deep he wonders if it can ever resurface.

She _sees_ him, this woman.

Sure, she looks at him, she laughs with him, wriggles with the delight of him.

But it’s not that kind of seeing.

_I know you_ , her eyes tell him when they pause to drink in the wide-eyed wonder in the eyes of the other. _I understand_.

He is more grateful of this than the orgasm she’d coaxed with her tongue.

He hugs her tight enough to hurt, so she knows.

## Open Doorways I

‘Zuko,’ she whispers and it’s the drowsy alarm in her voice that makes him peel open his eyes in preparation to kill whoever or whatever has disturbed her.

‘Hm?’

She’s turning a smile into his chest, her fingers gripping him nearer. ‘The door…’

He searches blearily through the gloom of the room. _Oh_. The door.

‘It’s open,’ he says stupidly.

She smothers her laugh between his chest and his arm. ‘Were we loud?’

He smirks. ‘You were.’

‘Your uncle _had_ to insist on staff…’

He huffs— a sound of amusement— and leans down to kiss her temple. Her cheek. She squirms when his fingers wander over the soft skin below her belly button and he presses himself against her side.

She eyes him in disbelief. ‘Again?’

Zuko kisses the surprise from her lips. ‘I live to serve, my lady…’

## Open Doorways II

Rashi finds both maids— Shi and Kiwaki— outside the door to their majesty’s private residence, holding silent giggles behind their fists. The two girls are whispering, their cheeks red and eyes wide.

Alarm catches Rashi’s stomach then hardens into movement. ‘What are you doing?’ she demands.

The girl’s jump as though electrocuted, spinning to guiltily face the household attendant. ‘Oh!’ Shi squeaks, glancing once back down the hallway to the Firelord and Lady’s ajar bedroom door.

‘Mistress Rashi!’ Kiwaki says too loudly. She lowers her voice: ‘Mistress Rashi. We were on our way to turn down their majesty’s bed for the evening…’

A moan— breathless and unchecked by decorum— drifts, unimpeded, down the corridor.

Rashi feel her face glow as red as her subordinates. ‘Not tonight,’ she hisses and yanks the girl’s back from the dimly lit hallway. ‘Congratulations, you have the night off as well, girls.’

## The Words I

‘Do you remember the night I came to see you? After you and Mai announced your engagement?’

Zuko glances at her. They are laying on their sides, noses maybe a handspan apart, legs tangled; Katara’s toes idly stroke a short strip of his calf. She is glowing, her smile a permanent fixture; Zuko notices crinkles at the corners of her eyes and cannot understand how she is becoming more beautiful with age…

‘Zuko?’

He presses a chaste kiss to her lips, stroking her back. ‘I’ll never forget that night.’

She nods and brushes her nose against his. ‘We stayed up the whole night catching up, talking and…’

‘And?’ he prompts her, a grin twitching his lips.

She flushes but her eyes sparkle at him. ‘I used to think that night was the best sex of my life.’

Something like satisfaction stokes his pride. ‘Who was I competing with? Your northern boy?’

‘Tako?’ She makes a face, the same one she used to make at Sokka’s smelly socks. ‘He used teeth on places that no one should ever bite.’

‘Need me to kiss it better?’

‘I believe you’ve already done that. Three times.’

He kisses the corner of her mouth, twice, four times, seven. ‘Did you know seven is an auspicious number in the Fire Nation?’

## The Words II

‘I do know that.’ He lets his hands trail down her spine. ‘You’re distracting me… I’m trying to tell you something.’

He gives her space, a little of it, returns to tracing the outline of her shoulder blade.

Katara sighs, it’s unsteady. ‘That night we spent together… We spoke about everything and when it got too hard, we… took a break from speaking.’ Her eyes are ocean deep and dark as night in the low light of their bedroom. ‘Zuko, if there’s anything, anything at all you can say, please find a way to tell me.’

His hand halts its lazy route across her skin. Zuko holds her gaze for a moment, two, but the love there… he doesn’t deserve it. Not after the way he’s been treating her.

He tells her so. ‘I don’t know how you can still care. Not after how I’ve been… not after how I’ve hurt you.’

Katara grips his shoulder so hard he winces. ‘There’s nothing that hurts me more than when you shut me out,’ she says fiercely, and he feels laid bare under the eye of a storm. ‘Anything, Zuko. I’ll always, _always_ , want to hear it.’

He’s silent for so long that half of him hopes she’ll fall asleep. He’s silent for so long that she traces from his hip, up his chest and down to his wrist a dozen times. He’s silent so long that she eventually prompts him.

In a whisper so quiet he can barely hear: ‘It’s your bending, isn’t it?’

## The Words III

‘Yes.’

‘It’s not… working?’

‘I… I can…’ A finger on his jaw; warm and comforting. ‘I can, ah, _work with_ an existing flame… sort of. Rudimentarily. But summoning my own…’

‘Summoning your own?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh, Zuko…’

‘I know, I know, it’s not… becoming of the Firelord, let alone the man you married—’

‘What are you talking about?’

Stony silence.

‘I’m _upset_ because you’ve obviously been struggling with this for a while! And you haven’t spoken to anyone about it! I mean, I thought something was wrong a few months ago when you began regularly cancelling our weekly sparring dates, but I never knew…’

‘You don’t need to pretend. I know it’s shameful.’

‘ _Zuko_.’

‘Ow! Why are you hitting me?’

‘I swear to Tui and La, Agni and whoever else is listening: If you don’t ease up on my husband, I will water whip your butt!’

‘Okay!’

‘I mean it! Stop beating him up! He’s not well! Practice some compassion!’

‘Alright! Stop hitting me!’

‘No! _You_ be kinder to yourself! Imagine if the positions were reversed! What if I was having problems with my bending? Would you tell me to be ashamed of myself?’

No answer.

‘Well! Would you?’

‘… No.’

Katara throws her hands in the air before thinking better of it and grabbing his instead, holding it to her chest. ‘You expect a lot from yourself. Don’t let that expectation run unchecked or it will poison you from the inside out.’

## The Words IV

_You expect a lot from yourself. Don’t let that expectation run unchecked or it will poison you from the inside out_.

‘Are you asleep?’

‘No.’

‘Did you hear what I said?’

He tightens his arms around her— this infuriating, incredible, wise waterbender— and presses his nose into her hair. ‘Yes.’

_You expect a lot from yourself. Don’t let that expectation run unchecked or it will poison you from the inside out_.

‘Zuko?’

‘Hm?’

‘Tomorrow… Will you let me try some chi healing techniques?’

He strokes the back of her neck, thumbs her skin until she presses closer, rubs her body against his. ‘Yes.’

## A Reprieve from the Words I

There’s this sound Katara makes when he stretches out their foreplay beyond her tolerance. It’s not quite a whine, its deeper. It’s not quite a groan, its angrier. It’s demanding and unfiltered and it makes Zuko feel ten feet tall when he draws it from her.

‘For the love of the _moon_ , will you just— please!’

She is grabbing for him, useless, frustrating grasping, for his head, his hair— anything. Zuko presses his forearm over her hips, forcing her back down. He glances up her body and her hips twitch upwards, desperate, craven.

‘Zuko! Please!’

He dips his head but only to breathe, warm and moist, against the swollen pearl of nerves he’s aching to kiss.

Katara makes _the sound_ and his cock weeps precome into the rug. ‘Spirits…’ she pants, and he’s captivated by the view: the round plain of her belly, her chin tilted up to the ceiling between the pebbled peaks of her breasts.

He wets his lips and drags just the edge of them over that sensitive bud.

The waterbender’s back bows and she swears with curse words the Firelady usually frowns at.

## A Reprieve from the Words II

She’s crying again, but she’s also coming so he knows he’s doing something right. She’s trying to wriggle off of the three fingers inside of her, the three that have been edging her for the last twenty-five minutes, but Zuko wants to feel her clamp down on him, wants to _feel_ her come undone while watching the whole beautiful spectacle of her flushed cheeks and straining muscles and—

Yes, even the tears. Agni, there’s something about _these_ tears, the ones that come as she does. His whole groin throbs watching her eyes well up and glaze her cheeks.

He still hasn’t taken his fingers out. Will she’ll let him bring himself off while touching her? He just wants to touch her—

The waterbender drags herself up into a slouch, tears still leaking from her eyes, her nose running. She looks ravaged. She’s ravaging. He groans and brings the three wet fingers from his wife to his cock, rubs her creaminess over his—

‘Don’t you dare,’ she rasps, wiping at her eyes. They’re almost black in this light as she swats his hand away from that painfully hard flesh.

It twitches pitifully. It hurts.

‘Fair’s fair,’ his wife whispers to him and she strokes him with the lightest possible touch.

_Not enough, please, more, no, not like thatpleasemoremoremore_.

## A Reprieve from the Words III

Zuko doesn’t cry but he’s incoherent when Katara brings him off almost a full hour later. He’s so worked up, the orgasm does little to relieve the tension wound tight around his spine and he meets her bruising kiss with even more heat.

_More_.

He feels sixteen again, grinding his aching cock against this waterbender’s thighs, her stomach.

‘More?’ she whispers against his lips and makes to pull away.

Zuko still cannot talk but there is unchartered strength in his veins, muscles bursting to _do_. He pulls her onto his lap, heedless of the mess they smear between their skin, and presses himself inside of her.

Katara laughs, unaffected, and rises on her knees to tease the tip of him. ‘What’s the matter, my love?’

He snarls, both hands on her hips, pressing— pulling— _Agni, just_ —

‘Was it too much?’ she wonders, trailing her fingers across his tensed collar bones. ‘Spirits, your skin… you’re burning up!’

Only the tip of him is brushing the damp curls between her thighs, he needs her to press down, he needs—

Zuko spits into his right hand and presses the slicked fingers into that second, tighter hole.

Her breath hitches and she moans as she presses down— onto his fingers, onto his cock.

## The Festival’s Final Ritual I

Afterwards, Zuko kisses his wife’s flushed cheek as he gets to his feet. There’s only one lantern burning by the door so it makes no sense that the room feels brighter, more colourful, _more_. Except it does.

To Zuko, nothing makes more sense than the magic of his waterbender’s touch.

‘Where you going?’ Her voice is muffled, her hair tangled. Zuko feels himself glow at the sight.

‘Wait here. I have a surprise for you.’

She doesn’t argue, doesn’t ask, only watches him pull his robe closed and slip into the adjoining bathroom.

The bath is already full, Rashi’s doing perhaps, and a wide dish of yuzu fruit sit at the lip. As a child, his mother would take up the Ember Island tradition and bathe he and Azula in citrus scented water in the dying days of summer. _To welcome the cool season_ , she had told the splashing children, _and protect our bodies from sickness_.

Zuko kneels beside the tepid bath water and breathes deep down into his stomach, exhaling through the serpent-free cavity in his chest. Down, he draws the breath, and up— up through his base, his sacral, his solar plexus, his heart.

Zuko exhales and plunges his hand into the water.

Slowly, steam begins to rise.

## The Festival’s Final Ritual II

When they’re both submerged in the sunken wooden bath, yuzu citrus rising on the steam, Zuko spends long minutes at Katara’s back, combing her hair through his fingers. He catches on knots, causes her to wince then laugh and pull her long, slicked hair over her shoulder. She detangles it with an efficiency that captivates him. When she lets him touch it again, her hair is silky smooth; it slips between his fingers.

Katara turns, the water sloshing around them. ‘Here,’ she mumbles. Her wrists dance as though conducting an orchestra. The symphony of yuza water rises like music, plays softly along his skin, through his hair.

Her lips spread in the kind of smile he rarely sees anymore.

Awe. He is awed by her.

‘Come here,’ he mutters and tugs her forward until the water she’s threading through his hair splashes down their skin and she’s sitting straddled over his lap.

He’s staring, he knows he is, but for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel held under by shame to be here by her side.

Only pride.

His voice comes out choked. ‘Katara.’

‘I know.’ She presses her forehead against his, touches his neck so softly it’s barely there. A softness he never knew before the Painted Lady and rooftop tea and a waterbender learning how darkness only strengthens a soul’s inner light.

As one they move; she tilts back, he presses forward— a push, a pull— and he’s inside her once more.

In the citrus scented water, tears are shed and love is made.

## The Soft Moments

It’s still night-time— the barest moonlight dimly illuminates the room with soft, milky light— but she’s elsewhere, moving about the room. ‘What’re you doing?’

‘It’s cool tonight, I want a blanket. Do you want another pillow?’

He grunts, ‘Yes,’ and opens his eyes. She is… ‘Beautiful.’

‘ _Zuko_.’

‘You’re beautiful.’

‘I’m not having sex with you again. _Everything_ aches.’

He smirks and closes his eyes. ‘I know a good healer.’

His wife drops his pillow on his head. ‘I hear she’s dangerous.’

‘And beautiful.’

‘Oh spirits, go to sleep.’

He pulls her back against him, peppers her neck and shoulders with kisses. ‘Yes, my lady.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SFW SUMMARY: Zuko and Katara reconnect with some very intimate sexy shenanigans which also silences the serpent in Zuko’s head for a hot minute allowing him to open up about how he’s been feeling and that his bending has disappeared. By the end of the evening, he’s able to heat a bath with his bending!
> 
> Time for me to shake the begging tin for comments *does so * What did you think? Yes, you. Don’t look behind you, I’m talking to you. Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments/reviews!


	6. vi. Day Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Day Five" or "Author Finds Excuse to Write Whimsical Metaphysical Nonsense." I would like to acknowledge my complete cherry picking of whatever new agey version of Hinduism Google churned up when I Googled “how to unblock *insert chakra here*”. I do not endorse what I have written here. Let us all blame Guru Pathik and canon for this drivel…
> 
> The poems in "The Earth Chakra" and (next chapter’s) "The Fire Chakra" are not mine. They’re excerpts from How I Became a Warrior by Jeff Foster— an incredible poem I stumbled on a while back and it suits Zuko to a tee here! The little ditty in "The Water Chakra" is a FISI creation (god help us, she’s back on the poetry band wagon -.-).
> 
> EDIT because I am a fool of a Took and forgot to credit the eminently amazing RideBoldlyRide who beta'd this mess of a story when I wanted to throw a tantrum <3 Thanks, lady. you saved my bacon!

## A Late Start to the Day I

They sleep in until well past breakfast. Zuko is alarmed— he never sleeps past dawn— but Katara is stretching like a cat in mid-morning sunshine. She loves late nights and lazy mornings and they haven’t had this since before Kana was born. No, since before Izumi, back when a madman burned the world and they stayed up nights wearing paints and masks.

He mentions this, wishing she was still sleepy and warm beside him. ‘I don’t think I’ve slept this late since we ran nights and drank tea together on the rooftops of Ba Sing Se.’

‘You have a ridiculous obsession with rising with the sun,’ she agrees.

‘Not back then.’ He rubs his hand over his eyes and remembers how the Blue Spirit’s mask feels against his skin. ‘You kept me on my toes.’

‘I can’t believe you didn’t expose yourself sooner,’ she scoffs; an old joke between them. ‘You. You can barely get through one of Ito and Kana’s pretend games without cracking; how did you keep your identity secret from me for months?’

Zuko’s back is stiff. He wonders if it has something to do with that last time when he twisted to thrust— ‘What can I tell you? I’m sneaky.’

Katara is pulling on a robe, threading a clip through her hair and pinning it back in a low updo. ‘You’re only sneaky when it comes to scaling rooftops. Interpersonal sneaking is your Kyoshi’s heel.’

He is naked except for the blanket pooling at his waist so when Kiwaki peers through the open door, beaming red, she stutters a terrified apology and disappears back down the corridor.

Katara looks at him and she doesn’t need to speak for him to know what she’s thinking. _So not sneaky_.

## A Late Start to the Day II

‘Will their majesties enjoy breaking their fast now? Or would their majesties prefer to wait for the midday meal?’ Rashi is speaking to them but her gaze is determinedly fixed across the dining room on the fruit bowl.

Katara’s hand leaves his as she steps forward. ‘Don’t worry the cook, Rashi. We can wait for lunch, it’s our own fault for sleeping half the day away.’

The attendant stiffens; at her side, Mushi, the housekeeper shakes his head. ‘Not at all, your majesty. The cook would be honoured to attend to your majesties, whatever time of day.’

‘Really, we’re fine.’ Katara looks to Zuko; _tell them_ , her eyes say.

‘Oh. Yes, we’ll wait, Mushi.’

She raises a brow at him; Zuko just shrugs.

He feels better than he has in weeks, but his tired body and mind are miles away from caring about inconveniencing cooks, preoccupied as he is with the host of tender and heated moments from last night.

## A Healer’s Touch I

At Katara’s request, Rashi and Mushi pack cheeses, bread, fruit, and cured meats into a woven basket. This Zuko is to carry. Shi and Kiwaki prepare a picnic rug, utensils, a bottle of plum wine. Apparently, this Zuko is also to carry.

Katara hitches her travel satchel over her shoulder, the one containing the herbed waters she keeps on hand for skinned knees, bruised fingers, and a burnt-out husband.

He insists on the staff remaining at the house. It is imperative there are no witnesses to this.

He’s afraid the newly rekindled smoulder inside his chest would go out under the pressure of an audience.

## A Healer’s Touch II

Zuko leads them to the private beach, the crescent cove at the end of the stairs cut into dark, weathered rock. It’s late morning and the sun is punishing so they stash the woven basket, picnic rug, and healer’s satchel in the sliver of shade under the rocky outcropping and make for the water.

Katara draws him out, out past the lazily breaking waves to float by the burnt pier.

There she tells him of chakra _amm_.

Zuko clutches the remaining timber, keeping away from the sharp oyster shells below the waterline, as his waterbender talks then stutters then cries.

Growths, she tells him with fear in her eyes. Tired, irritable, cold sweats, vomit, blood. Diminished bending.

Death if untreated.

The serpent stirs faintly within him.

Death if untreated.

## A Healer’s Touch III

Katara drifts closer, sea water or tears glistening on her cheeks. ‘I don’t know how to heal it,’ she finishes, her voice soft as waves on the sand. ‘Not yet. But I will. I’ll find a way.’

_Aang said fear blocks your earth chakra. Guilt, shame, grief, lies, illusions, attachments._

His chi has stopped flowing.

He’s out of balance.

Ungrounded.

‘How long have you known?’

‘About the chakra _amn?_ Since yesterday.’ The look she turns to the horizon is haunted. ‘But I’ve known something wasn’t right for a while.’

‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘I tried to!’

‘You should have told me!’

‘I _tried!_ ’ Her voice echoes thunderously, harsh against the waves and wharf. ‘A hundred times! You wouldn’t talk to me. Don’t you dare blame me now.’

Zuko scowls as despair floods him. _No,_ he tells the serpent’s encroaching touch. No.

‘I’ve felt it.’ He twines his fingers through hers; a silent apology. ‘I’m sorry. I feel it. It’s been—’ _months since I’ve felt I could breathe without floundering_ ‘— I haven’t felt myself for a long time.’

She nods, drifting closer. ‘We can do this. You and me. We can do it.’

‘I know.’ He rests his forehead against hers, trembling. ‘I know.’

## The Earth Chakra I

Katara leads him up the beach trailing water from her pale swimsuit. It’s little more than her sarashi and a short skirt tied at the waist and Zuko cannot look away.

Until she reminds him.

‘I think here will work.’ Her hand is pressed against the severe stone that is the only shade in the whole cove. She sits with her back to the unyielding rock and smiles up at him. ‘Take a seat.’

As though his body is aching to rid itself of the serpent— as though there are powers beyond mortals and sickness— something at the base of Zuko’s spine aches in supplication when he sits back against the rock and the earth.

In this pose, the meditation form he’d learned as a child, Zuko’s eyes slip shut.

He breathes.

Beneath him, behind him, the earth is solid.

## The Earth Chakra II

 _There are fewer assassination attempts these days_ , he reasons when Katara asks him to think of all he fears. The Fire Nation, despite the challenges, is a force for good.

‘ _Your_ fears, Zuko. Not the Fire Nation’s. Yours.’

_Mine?_

With the severity of stone, they come.

_I fear failing._

_I fear becoming like my father._

_I fear not being a good father._

_I fear not being a good Firelord._

_I fear that I’m too weak, not strong enough._

_I fear that I cannot protect my family without my bending._

_I fear…_

His hands tremble under the touch of coastal winds on his damp skin. The cold sweat is gritty. He can smell himself, smell the fear. A voice with his uncle’s cadence smiles upon him. _You are not the man you fear to be_ , it tells him.

At the base of his spine, a warm hand gloved in water soothes the ache that grows with each new fear.

‘Let them go,’ the voice tells him. ‘Let them flow away.’

‘Let them go,’ he mutters and Zuko wonders how he expects himself to carry his nation from underneath the burden of all this fear.

‘Just breathe.’ Katara’s voice sounds miles away. Whole worlds apart.

 _Just breathe_ , he thinks as the trembling gains speed.

## The Earth Chakra III

 _Zuko_.

It’s his name. A word that belongs to him and yet it summons more intangible, slippery things— swirling melodies, a kaleidoscope of sensation that is visual and aural and mythic in that trance state between awareness and sleep. From the darkness, a voice sung.

_Once, I ran from fear_

_So fear controlled me._

_Until I learned to hold fear like a newborn._

_Listen to it, but not give in._

_Honour it, but not worship it._

_Fear could not stop me anymore._

_I walked with courage into the storm._

_I still have fear,_

_but it does not have me._

_Zuko_.

It grounds him, this naming, it draws him upwards, out, away. The voice calling his name wakes him; he likes the way his name sounds said in this voice...

‘Can you open your eyes?’ Panicked, the voice is panicked. But contained, strong like the anchors that hold fast wayward ships. He follows the voice.

Katara’s blue eyes stare into his, creased in concern.

He makes the shapes of her name with his mouth, but no sound comes out. Deep down, at the base of his body, he feels warm. Alive.

She’s feeling his forehead, her hands soothing, cool. ‘It opened. Can you hear me? I felt it clear, Zuko, your earth chakra.’

He smiles because this is a victory. Then he pushes her out of the way to vomit blood onto the sun drenched sand.

## A Well Earned Lunch I

When his head and vision clear, Zuko is laying on his side, a damp and salty compress over his forehead. Sand clings to his cheeks and lashes while the sunlight cuts into his squinted eyes. His breath whistles on the exhale and every muscle around the base of his spine aches.

The serpent has his voice in a guilt-fuelled strangle hold, but he clears his throat anyhow and wheezes, ‘Katara.’

She’s by his side before he can raise his head to look for her. She knows him well, well enough that she doesn’t bother advising him to lay still. When she does speak all she says is, ‘Slowly.’

The horizon shimmers, the sun volcano hot, when he finally slouches up. ‘What happened?’

His waterbender’s mouth is a thin line, her lips pale pink rather than red under the strain. ‘You were sick. You lost consciousness.’

He spies the pink-tinged puddle beside them. ‘It’s only fair, I supposed.’

Her brow creases in concern. ‘What?’

‘After all the times I held back your hair when you were pregnant with Kana.’

That shocks a laugh from her. ‘Keeping score, are we?’

The base of his spine feels _alive_. Warm. It hums with good humour.

## A Well Earned Lunch II

Despite Katara’s misgivings— ‘For the love of the ocean! _Please_ eat slowly instead of like my brother!’— the bread, cheese, fruit, and cured meats do wonders for his body. He feels better than he has in a week, better than he’s felt in _months_. The food might restore his body but it’s the plum wine that restores his spirits.

The first sip merely washes the taste of blood and bile from his mouth.

The second enlivens his tongue to the bursting flavours.

‘This is _incredible_ ,’ he says, dumbfounded. He’s staring between Katara and the glass in disbelief. ‘Have you tried this?’

She raises a brow at him, taking the glass and sipping. ‘It’s the same wine we’ve had at dinner.’

He blinks, the whole of the sun warming his bare back. ‘No way, this tastes _unbelievable_. I would have noticed.’

 _Would you? s_ ays the look in his waterbender’s eyes.

But she hands the glass back to him with a hidden grin. ‘Go easy on the wine, Firelord Pukes-a-lot.’

## The Water Chakra I

After they eat, while digesting a healed earth chakra and lunch, the Firelord and Lady sit in the shallows, waves lapping lazily at their waists. For Zuko, it is cacophonous. The serpent’s grip is looser than before, it’s slipping like night giving way to day.

This new appreciation for the world makes some things startlingly clear.

‘I’m sorry for the way I’ve been treating you,’ he tells her in a voice as soft as the shallow seas. The waves are lapping at his waist, over the coil of tension in his sacrum. Zuko takes a deep breath and looks at Katara, looks right at her. ‘It was wrong of me to blame you like I have been, to say what I did at Mai’s grave last week…’

Her eyes round and soften. ‘You weren’t well, Zuko. You don’t have to—’

‘I do.’ It’s important she understands this, it’s important to him that she knows; beneath the shifting water around him, his sacrum begins to warm. ‘I’m not… The chakra sickness is one thing. I never want to get to a place where you just accept me treating you dishonourably.’ He swallows but doesn’t turn away from the startled blue eyes before him. ‘I wouldn’t have made it these years as Firelord without you, even before we were married. You’ve never not picked me up when I fall. You’re my strength, Katara, and I haven’t turned to you. You were right last night; I’ve… blocked you out. Will you forgive me?’

She opens her mouth but not to say anything, he thinks. She looks stunned, as if her worth to him has only just occurred to her. That warmth below his stomach flares once— hungry flames on dry tinder— and he takes her hand, pulls her nearer, near enough to hold.

‘I vow to not hold out on you again, if you can forgive me. I vow to…’ This is hard for him but, now the serpent has been weakened, not impossible. ‘I promise to always try to talk to you rather than take it out on you.’

She gives him this, doesn’t fight him on it.

Katara lets him take it back— his own honour.

‘I forgive you,’ she says simply, a sheen of tears in her eyes. ‘And thank you for your apology.’

There’s a lump in his throat when he rests his forehead against hers. ‘The honour is mine, my lady.’

## The Water Chakra II

She watches him from the corner of her eye, feeling like a young girl discovering love all over again, because this lighter, thoughtful man sitting beside her with the ocean all around him is as different from the man who’d arrived on Ember Island five days ago as earth from sky. Light from dark.

‘I’ve felt…’ he begins in a tiny voice, but hesitation steals his words.

She prays for him to continue, her whole bending sense focused on the knot of rapidly untwisting energy in his lower abdomen. His navel is beneath the waterline and she has the whole ocean bent towards the snarled chi there.

‘Do you think I’ve been a good father?’ he continues in a rush and the guilt and uncertainty in his expression nearly brings her to tears. Her heart aches with him.

‘Zuko. I couldn’t ask for a better father for our kids.’

‘It’s just… I’ve missed so many moments,’ he says in a strained tone as a dam bursts in the chakra below the waterline. ‘I missed the first time Kana bent water _and_ the first time Ito bent fire, I’m barely around during the fiscal season to put them to bed at night and I’m always up before they are in the morning. I feel like I’m so busy that their lives will slip by and before I know it, they’ll be their own people and I won’t know who they are.

‘And Izumi…’ He makes a strangled sound and runs his hands through his hair. ‘She told me she barely remembers what Mai looks like anymore. She has to grow up without her birth mother because I couldn’t make peace between the loyalists fast enough and now I can’t even _bend_. How am I supposed to keep you all safe?’

She can’t help it. Katara moves behind him and presses her hands against his sacrum as the knot of energy whirls. ‘More. What else do you feel guilty about?’

He turns and catches her eye.

The Firelord accepts the command and continues.

## The Water Chakra III

‘Uncle must have sent me a dozen requests for afternoon tea in the last two weeks and I keep snapping at him. I don’t have time, but he looks so hurt whenever I say no.

‘When I do try to take time for the kids, all I can think about are the hundreds of other children out there who don’t even have a home anymore after the economy went bust. How can I justify taking a day off to be with Izumi, Kana, and Ito when some parents can’t even put food on the table for their own children?

‘And it’s my fault that they can’t.’ The serpent’s fangs— sharp and venomous— pierce his soft insides. Beneath the waterbender’s hand over his sacrum, the serpent hisses and spits. ‘It’s my fault, Katara. Mine. It was my idea to transition our economic model away from the old war industries and now my people are suffering for it!’

Her fingers are cool against his feverish skin, hot with the serpent’s thrashing. ‘That isn’t your fault.’

‘But it is!’ He turns to her, gesturing emphatically, distractedly. Unhappily. The serpent was right about one thing: he was broken. And now all the Fire Nation suffers because of it. ‘You suggested the changes, I know, but I ran with them. I was so stupidly stubborn about getting at the war profiteers, so focused on hitting their coffers, that I passed this economic reform. And it’s destroyed people’s lives! _I_ sent them to the streets! I might as well have marched through their front doors with my dao swords and slit their throats! I might as well have let Azula be Firelord and set the country on fire!’

## The Water Chakra IV

He’s shaking when he runs out of accusations to hurl at himself, shaking and glowering at the uncaring sea waters tugging at his waist. Beneath his skin, the serpent grows fat and powerful on these words. There is the taste of ash and bile at the back of his throat, so it is the waterbender who breaks the silence first.

‘If that’s true, then I’m just as guilty as you.’

He and the serpent look up sharply. ‘What are you talking about?’

Katara’s expression is soft but no less fierce because of it. ‘Like you said, it was my idea. I interviewed and hired the policy writers, I oversaw the early drafts, I brought the proposal to the council.’

‘But it was my call! My decision. I know the Fire Nation; I should have known—’

‘If you’re a criminal for this, Zuko, so am I. If the recession is your fault, it’s our fault.’

‘No, Katara, you didn’t…’ He sees the double think then, the dissonance, and the serpent is sent scurrying into its hole. Questioning her innocence isn’t even an option here: she did everything in her power, everything she could to ease the transition. She tried her hardest. She…

Her fingers tease the soft skin at his wrists. ‘You did your best, Zuko. We all did. We were warned from the start that this… that the recession would be a possibility. It’s nobody’s fault but the men who put the Fire Nation’s strength into war and war only.’ And then, softly, ‘We’re doing everything we can for them.’

Stunned silence.

The serpent is nowhere to be found.

Their people.

They’re doing all they can for their people.

## The Water Chakra V

He’s breathing hard and shaking but Katara can feel the thread unwinding with her bending sense. She releases his hand, presses firmly against his lower back. ‘I’m not surprised this chakra is clearing so quickly,’ she mutters right into his ear. ‘The water chakra is blocked by guilt but it’s where pleasure comes from…’

Zuko gives a choked chuckle. ‘I think we worked extensively on this one last night.’

‘Mm.’

‘I like this chakra.’

Katara smirks into his shoulder, pressing a fleeting kiss to the point where it meets his neck. ‘My love, these things happened. The economy, the loyalist’s attack on Mai, your uncle… don’t let them cloud you. You’re doing the best you can and that’s all anyone can ask of you.’

‘But the kids—’

‘Love you and as they get older they’ll understand. Izumi does.’ She sighs as the knot throbs and chi begins to trickle through. ‘Besides, we’re a team. The nights I work late, you or Uncle Iroh are there to put the kids to bed. We do the best we can. I think we do a great job as parents and Firelords.’

## The Water Chakra VI

From his thoughts, no. Not his thoughts. Somewhere deeper. Darker. From the place below his navel, a voice that spoke with Katara’s cadence speaks.

_Once, guilt overwhelmed me,_

_Dragged me down into its depths._

_I felt it’s shocking power_

_It’s unyielding weight and strength._

_I let its stories run wild,_

_Spoke them all, every one_

_To the caring heart beside me_

_Who listened as I came undone._

They sigh in unison as the chakra clears.

His guilt hasn’t disappeared but— in the turbulent waters of his mind— there is an island, a place for him to shelter with his head above the waves; somewhere for him to absorb her words and ponder: perhaps perfection is a destructive companion. Perhaps his ideal is not helpful but hindering.

Perhaps, he could learn to float.

Zuko must squint to smile at his waterbender; the sun is shining so brightly it dazzles him.

## The Vacation I

Zuko jogs back to the villa and returns with _Botsudo’s Compendium of Ember Island Mythology_. In the afternoon shadows cast by the cove’s rocky outcropping, waterbender and firebender laze in the shade taking turns reading aloud from the book of folk stories.

Katara reads _The Man Who Talked Spirits into Life_ , elbowing Zuko and complaining loudly when he belly laughs at her old man spirit voice.

‘Shut up!’ she wheezes through her own laughter. ‘Hey _stop it!_ That is _exactly_ what an old man perving on spirits would sound like!’

Zuko chooses _The Tale of the Sun and the Moon_ , a romantic tragedy about a princess and a priestess cursed to remain apart through the workings of two jealous lords who sought them as brides.

‘I remember reading this one when I was pregnant with Kana,’ Katara hiccups as he finishes the story with the deaths of the two women after a long sad life apart.

‘ _I_ remember you reading this one when you were pregnant with Kana. You woke me up, sobbing, and made me sit up with you while reading the post-enlightenment age retellings where the princess and the priestess could be together.’

She grins and presses her face into his collar bones. ‘You were so tired but too frightened to upset me more.’

‘You were _weeping_. Over an old scroll.’

‘It was sad!’

Zuko doesn’t try to hide his smile as he presses a kiss to the top of her head. ‘It was sad.’

‘But it was good. Their tragedy made me appreciate the love I have in my life.’

He traces the outline of her hand where it splays over his stomach. ‘This vacation has made me appreciate the love I have in my life too.’

## The Vacation II

As the afternoon wears on and the sun begins to set, they make their way through _Botsudo’s Compendium of Ember Island Mythology_. The folk stories become increasingly stranger as the compendium lists older and older myths. They spend long minutes laughing at the tale of the woman who loses her husband in a basket of laundry when he is turned into a flea, discussing the stories of long dead Firelords and their great achievements, and bickering over whose turn it is to do the “Sokka spirit voice.”

When Katara turns the final page of the book, expecting an afterword from Botsudo himself, she instead finds her name.

Not her Water Tribe name.

Her secret one.

‘Spirits…’

‘What?’

Carefully, she scans the insert that reads _The Saga of the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady_.

## The Vacation III

‘Did you write this?’

Zuko blanches. ‘Me? I was going to ask you!’

‘No, I never wrote down anything about this…’

In unison, they realise. ‘Sokka.’

‘Spirits, _dammit!_ I’m going to kill him!’

‘Read it first.’

They turn back to the page and read.

## The Warrior Author

‘I mean… he definitely didn’t help us _at all_ in Ba Sing Se.’

Katara just sighs.

‘I can’t believe he took credit for the Wong Lon Chi… as “Boomerang Man.”’

She sighs once more and closes the compendium. ‘I’ll bet you the rest of the plum wine that he wrote this when we were here before the comet. He was _obsessed_ with the Blue Spirit before he knew it was you.’

‘Aang told me he once stole your needle and thread and stitched the Blue Spirit’s mask into his underpants.’

‘Is that what it was meant to be? I saw it once when I was doing laundry and thought he’d tangled the thread and given up trying to fix it.’

Laughing, Zuko reaches for the wine and pours the last of it into the cup they’ve been sharing. ‘To Sokka?’

‘No! _Definitely_ not to Sokka. We told him he had to keep our identities secret and he’s written… fanfiction about us.’

He presses his lips flat to hold back his grin and raises the glass. ‘To Ember Island and vacations.’

Katara looks up, a curl falling between them. The serpent is the size of a worm and her smile is more beautiful than the whole sunset playing out over the horizon. ‘To Ember Island and vacations.’

## Desperation & Privilege I

Upon returning arm-in-arm to the villa, they hear voices raised in anger, in desperation, issuing from the kitchen window. Sharing a concerned glance, Zuko silently places the empty basket down on the deck, plucking a thick stick of bamboo from the garden beyond the porch while Katara calls moisture from the pond around the back.

As one, they bend at the knee and slink forward into the house. Other than the ruckus coming from the kitchen, the house is silent and empty. As they turn the corner, they spy Mushi, Shi, Kiwaki, and Ran the cook in the hall, crowded around the doorway.

Katara hears Rashi’s voice raised in alarm. ‘Do you want us to lose everything, Moku?! Is that what you want?’

‘How can you live with yourself without trying? Do you have any honour? No wife of mine—’

A resounded _smack_ caused a brief silence before the cacophony resumes— louder and with all the buzzing discord of an unturned wasp nest.

The Firelord and Lady move as one.

Together they push past the startled servants and into the kitchen, bamboo club and water raised.

## Desperation & Privilege II

‘Your majesties!’ Rashi gasps, the tears in her eyes magnifying the misery that lurks behind them. ‘Pardon your servant, I beg you! Our humblest and deepest apologies for disturbing—’

Katara— having cast her eye over the family clustered together and surrounded by ash-stained boxes and bags, the furious man opposite Rashi with the handprint over his face— shakes her head. ‘Are you okay, Rashi?’

The attendant’s teary eyes spill over though nothing but restraint appears in her expression. ‘Your majesty is too kind. Your servant is merely attempting to remove trespassers—’

‘Trespassers!’ the red-faced man roars and, when he makes to storm nearer, Zuko steps between he and Rashi. ‘Is that all family means to you, woman?!’ he shouts over Zuko’s shoulder.

‘Control yourself,’ Zuko says in a deadly quiet tone; he twists the crude bamboo weapon in a decidedly unnerving way. ‘What is your business here?’

The man is forced to meet Zuko’s stern look, his own anger quieting at the order. ‘I am sorry for the intrusion, Firelord Zuko, but we are desperate.’

## Desperation & Privilege III

‘It’s my fault,’ a wretched voice cries from the small group huddled by the back kitchen door.

Zuko blinks. ‘Toshi?’

The boy from their sailing endeavour comes forward on shaking legs, wringing his hands before him. ‘My fault, sir. I was telling Uncle Moku about the villa house and the grounds and the ship, that Water Tribe ship with all the hammock beds, you know? So when the guard came and turned everyone out of the beach homes, he— he— the island families already went to talk to Lord Zhiyo but he weren’t listening, sir!’

The Firelord crouches, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Slow down, son. You are in no trouble here. If these good people need a place to stay, Lady Katara and I would be honoured to offer them accommodation.’ He glances up at Rashi and the red-faced Uncle Moku. ‘Please set the table for the whole household staff, Rashi, and call everyone to the table. My Uncle says there is nothing that cannot be resolved over a soothing cup of jasmine tea.’

The attendant is shaking, Katara’s arms wrapped around her shoulders. ‘As you say, Firelord Zuko.’

## The Disaster Profit I

‘After the fire destroyed half the homes on the island, we were left to house our homeless neighbours for days,’ Moku says with steely eyes and a hard grip on his faintly steaming tea. ‘Days, your majesty. Days until Lord Zhiyo thought to offer us so much as a penny. Family homes, already overcrowded, had to support hundreds of our people.’

Zuko and Katara, sitting elbow to elbow at the centre of the dining table’s long side, listened. They listened to the stories of stomach aches and fevers that went around the community in those days of overcrowding, they listened to the food shortages, the nights where a handful of rice was all anyone could expect to eat.

They listen gravely at the clear contradiction between the orders they had issued from the capital and Lord Mayor Zhiyo’s actions.

When Moku has said all he can, his anger washed away into empty-eyed despair, Katara shifts, turns to the man’s wife beside him. ‘Rashi, will you introduce us to these guests?’

The attendant nods, her expression ashen. ‘Of course, your majesty. At the table’s head sits Elder Ru, my uncle by marriage. With him is my cousin, Widow Dei, and her three children, Azino and Ma Lee. Toshi you know.’

Both Katara and Zuko press their fists to their palms and give the family a polite bow.

‘You are welcome here,’ Zuko tells them, his eyes on the old man with soot on his brow. ‘For as long as you require. I swear to you that your people will receive justice.’

## The Disaster Profit II

Katara catches the eye of the little girl, Ma Lee, and winks at her. ‘Are there any people who are still sick?’

‘Yes, Lady Katara, many,’ Elder Ru rumbles in a voice like underground lava flows. ‘The fever and belly aches were only the beginning. The spirits must truly seek to test us for a cough began to plague our sick and elderly not long after.’

 _The smoke_ , the Southern waterbender thinks grimly, _and the food shortages._

They are breaking their no work rule but neither choose to turn away.

They are not the kind of people who turn their backs on those who need them.

## The Disaster Profit III

‘What support did Lord Zhiyo offer?’ the Firelord questions, opening the discussion to all at the table. He does not tell them of the orders that he, Katara, and their counsellor’s issued in response to the fire around short term crisis accommodation. The Lord Mayor of Ember Island was to appropriate all vacant property belonging to the aristocracy in service to the displaced peoples. He does not tell them this because a failure of any of the aristocracy is his to bear. And hers.

It’s theirs.

‘The guard helped people gather up what survived the flames,’ Toshi bursts out, peering anxiously down the table.

‘Zhiyo opened some of the island’s tourist accommodation for those who lost their homes,’ the Widow Dei mutters.

‘And closed them again when there was coin to be made!’ Moku snaps, slamming his fist against the table. ‘That’s why Elder Ru’s family is here, your majesties. They were kicked out of the only home they’ve had since the fire when the tourists began pouring in for the Festival of Molten Sun! The lure of gold seems more important than children with a roof over their heads!’

## Rumour Has It IV

The Firelord and Lady don’t need to exchange a glance to know they are on the same page.

He thinks: _Zhiyo has been walking a fine line for years now. He’s a scaly rat-snake with no honour whose management of the once prosperous Ember Island caused a far steeper decline than it should have after a disaster like the fires. Politically, my hands are tied. He’s my uncle’s brother-in-law and protected by far more influential nobles in the capital. Politically my hands are tied but_ _—_

He says: ‘What has been done to you is dishonourable and unjust, Elder Ru, Widow Dei. I will pray to the spirits for guidance and convene an inquiry once Lady Katara and I return to the capitol. In the meantime, you will all call this house home. There are rooms here for twenty or more. Please see to it that they are put to good use.’

## Painted Plans

After a meal with Rashi and Moku’s family, the Firelord and Lady escape the gratitude of their guests and retreat to their room where their shoulder’s slump and they become Zuko and Katara once more.

‘We didn’t bring the disguises,’ she whispers as soon as the door is closed at her back.

‘I know.’ He wipes a tired hand over his face. It has been a long day of healing and purging and he wants nothing more than for the last few hours to have happened to somebody else, some other Firelord to shoulder his responsibilities.

‘There are the festival masks.’ Her hand traces its way down his bicep. ‘And we could visit the market tomorrow…’

He lifts his head to look at her, straight into her shadowed eyes; in this light they look navy dark and full of indignation, same as he. ‘And tomorrow night?’

‘We retire early,’ she replies smoothly, the hint of a wicked grin sliding up her face. ‘So we’ll be well rested for the journey home the following morning.’

_My Lady…_

‘That could work.’

Katara’s grin is all that shines in the gloom of their room.

## An Interlude

They are quiet when the take tea at the burned pier down by the water, but the stillness is not sharp with tension. Not any longer. Something calmer mutes the night.

‘How are you feeling?’ Katara breaks the silence to ask, her bright scrutiny beating at him like midday sun.

His shoulders are back, his head held high; tonight, he’d heated the water for their tea. He’d yet to produce a flame, but it’s been months since he felt this energised. How is he feeling? He feels like he can breathe again.

‘Better, thanks to you.’

‘You married well,’ she agrees, and her playful smile makes the tightness in his chest at the news of Zhiyo loosen.

‘I really did.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry not sorry about the canonically incorrect fanfiction reference… I had to!
> 
> Plot is occurring, people! Lord Zhiyo (an amalgamation of every shitty politician here in Australia who absolutely botched the bushfire emergency response) is a turd. In this house, we stan the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady giving him no mercy… *teases next chapter in the hopes it will result in delicious comments :D* BS/PL shenanigans and fire chakra unblocking to follow!

**Author's Note:**

> The first 22,000 words/3.5 chapters of this story are going to be an angst fest. Ye be warned. There is a payoff to the angst though, I promise!


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